I--*. 



/ ^-^7 



Co 

/ WILLIAM PRESTON JOHNSTON, LL D. 



PRESIDENT OP THE TULANK UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA 



IN APPRECIATION OF A VALUED FRIENDSHIP 



PEEFACE. 

This volume had its origin in a course of lectures on 
the study of history as illustrated in the plays of 
Shakespeare. It is never safe to assume that Avhat 
has been listened to ^vith attention will be read with 
interest. The lectures, however, have been recast, 
pruned, and amplified, and much machinery has been 
added in the way of tables of contents, bibliography, 
chronological tables, and index. With such helps it 
is hoped that these pages may effect a working part- 
nership between the Chronicle of the formal historian 
and the Epic of the dramatic poet. They are ad- 
dressed especially to those readers and students of 
English History who may not have discovered what an 
aid to the undei'standing of certain important phases 
of England's national development lies in these histor- 
ical plays, which cover a period of three hundred years 
— from King John and Magna Charta to Henry XTLl. 
and the Reformation. 

New Orleans, October, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

An Introduction to the English Historical Plays, . 1 



CHAPTER II. 
King John.— The Transition Period, 18 

CHAPTER III. 
Richard II. — The Lancastrian Usurpation, 57 

CHAPTER IV. 
Henry IV.— The Passing of Feudalism!, 93 

CHAPTER V. 
Henry V.— England's Song of Triumph, 134 

CHAPTER VI. 
Henry VI. — The Wars of the Roses, 169 

CHAPTER VII. 
Richard III.— The Last of the Plant agenets, . . . 206 



X CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

PAGE 

Henry VIII. —The English Reformation, 244 



CHAPTER IX. 
Summary, 291 

APPENDIX I. 
Bibliography, 297 

APPENDIX II. 
On the Date op the Authorship of Henry VIII, , . . 299 

APPENDIX III. 
Table of Shakespeare's English Kings, 306 

APPENDIX IV. 

On the Genealogy and Connections of the Houses of 

York and Lancaster, 307 

Index, 311 



ENGLISH HISTORY 
IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. 

CHAPTEE I. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS. 

Thoroughness of Shakespearean criticism. — His merits as an historical 
teacher passed over. — Knight's comment. — Purpose of this work. — 
The use of the historical plays. — Anachronisms and omissions. — 
Shakespeare's purpose in writing. — The student warned against ex- 
pecting too much. — The Elizabethan environment. — Cranmer's proph- 
ecy. — The English Zeit-geist. — The unity of the historical plays. — 
The theme is the decline and fall of the house of Plantagenet. — 
Epitome of each play. — Character contrasts. — Shakespeare's illuminat- 
ing pen. — His patriotic bias. — Conclusion. 

There is little enough in the works of Shakespeare 
that has escaped the critic's eye and pen. Every line 
has been measured, every word scrutinized, every punc- 
tuation mark solemnly adjusted, every printer's error 
in the First Folio has its " significance " pointed out, 
and emendations are a weariness to the flesh. 

One field of Shakespearean lore, however, has not 
received the attention it deserves. The art of the 
poet, the skill of the dramatist, the wit of the humorist, 
the wisdom of the philosopher, the genius of the man, 
all these have been turned to account and to good 
account. But the use and value of Shakespeare's con- 
tribution to English History has been passed over, or 
too lightly touched upon, and Coleridge's declaration, 



2 PURPOSE OF THIS WORK. 

that the people took their history from Shakespeare 
and their theology from Miltou, could not, in the case 
of the former at least, be truthfully quoted of this 
generation. Some critics have pointed out the obvious 
fact — which others have yet denied — that a unity of 
purpose runs through the poet's treatment of English 
history in the ten chronicle plays from King John to 
Henry YIII. Thomas Peregrine Courtnay has taken 
the trouble to set forth, in his valuable commentaries, 
the discrepancies in events and persons, between the 
poet and history. But there has been almost no 
attempt to illustrate the people and life of England, 
by the light thrown on them in these great historical 
dramas. One notable exception is the little volume, 
' ' English History," now out of print, by the late Professor 
Henry Eeed, of the University of Pennsylvania. This 
has a quaint and fascinating interest ; but the lectures 
as studies are not always accurate, and if Professor 
Reed had access to the original sources of the chron- 
icle plays he does not seem to have often used them. 

The following chapters seek to interest students of 
history in Shakespeare, and readers of Shakespeare in 
English history. Some of the plays rise to the dignity 
of history in its most engaging form. The broad sweep 
of events is neither swamped in the child-like annals 
of painful chronicles, nor smothered in the profundity 
of the modern school historian. " History strictly so 
called," says Charles Knight, both historian and critic, 
" the history derived from rolls and statutes, must 
* pale its ineffectual fire ' in the sunlight of the poet." 

It is not claimed, to be sure, that the plays could 
take the place of formal history. We do not read 



SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORICAL METHOD. 3 

Shakespeare for annals, or diaries, or even accurate 
succession of events ; but for the illumination he 
throws upon these — their interjDretatibn, as subtly in- 
dicated in the process of dramatic evolution — for 
vividness of detail and richness of local color. 

Lord Bacon exactly defines, in this spirit, the value 
of the historical drama, and hence the function of 
Shakespeare as a teacher of history : " Dramatic 
poetry is like history made visible, and is an image of 
actions past as though they were present." 

Heine, whose criticism is not always sound or based 
upon any canon beyond the author's own prejudices, 
does yet fairly estimate and sum up the historical value 
of these plays. " The great Briton is not only a poet 
but an historian : he Avields not only the dagger of 
Melpomene, but the still sharper stylus of Clio. In 
this respect he is like the earliest waiters of history, 
who also knevf no difference between poetry and his- 
tory, and so gave us not merely a nomenclature of 
things done, or a dusty herbarium of events, but who 
enlightened truth with song, and in w^hose song was 
heard only the voice of truth." 

So writing, Shakespeare taught history as it has never 
been taught since — not in tables, nor dates, nor statis- 
tics — not in records of revolts or details of battle-fields ; 
but history in its highest and purest form — the uncov- 
ering of those springs of action in which great national 
movements take their rise. 

The dramatist was bound by fidelity to his main pur- 
pose, to subordinate the details of history ; and accord- 
ing to the preponderance of the dramatic or the his- 
toric, we have a tragedy like Macbeth or a chronicle 



4 ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND, 

like Richard III. We are neither misled nor deceived 
therefore, when we find in these historical plays what 
would have no place in formal history. The very anach- 
ronisms of the poet are often most yalnable in the 
interpretation of events described, just as a discord in 
music heralds the resolving chords which introduce 
new harmonies. " They are perfect," these plays, in 
their way, " because there is no care about centuries 
in them." 

The England of Shakespeare's day was a potent en- 
vironment for both poet and people. Before Shake- 
speare left Stratford for London, began " the dawn of 
that noble literature, the most enduring and the most 
splendid of the many glories of England." It was the 
threshold of a new world. It was the golden age of 
Elizabeth, whose long and glorious reign left an after- 
glow during the first years of her pedantic successor, 
James. In that splendor Shakespeare lived and did 
most of his work ; in that after-glow he completed his 
task and died. " That epoch," as Motley finely says, 
" was full of light and life. The constellations which 
have for centuries been shining in the English firma- 
nent were then human creatures, walking English 
earth." All England was thrilling with the sense of a 
finer national life, a higher ideal of religion and patri- 
otism, an ever clearer conviction that the Anglo-Saxon 
was the race of destiny. 

The great captains — Raleigh, Hawkins, Gilbert, 
Thomas Cavendish, and Sir Francis Drake — were push- 
ing their bold prows into all seas, planting colonies in 
all new lands, and extending the dominions of the Vir- 
gin Queen with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm. 



ORANMERS PROPHECY. 5 

Shakespeare was impregnated with the Zeit-geist. In 
almost the final passage of the last chronicle play 
(" Henry YIII.") Archbishop Cranmer utters a pro- 
phetic strain upon the theme of Elizabeth and James, 
which well denotes for what state of national feeling 
the poet wrote and in what mood of the national mind 
he found reception for his work. 

After describing the glory and honor of Elizabeth's 
reign at home, the times of James I. and the settle- 
ment of the New World are thus referred to : 

Nor shall this peace sleep with her ; but as when 

The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, 

Her ashes new create another heir, 

As great in admiration as herself, 

So shall she leave her blessedness to one 

(When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness) 

Who, from the sacred ashes of her honor, 

Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, 

And so stand fixed. Peace, plenty, love, truth, teiTor, 

That were the servant to this chosen infant, 

Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him : 

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, 

His honour and the greatness of his name 

Shall be, and make new nations ; he shall flourish, 

And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches 

To all the plains about him ; our children's children 

Shall see this and bless heaven.' 

Such resounding periods voiced the sentiment of all 
England, of which London was then, even more than 
now, the mouthpiece. In those times, before the news- 
paper press had begun to mirror each day's record with 

1 Henry VHI., Act V., Scene. 4. 



6 THE ENGLISH ZEIT-OEIST. 

photographic minuteness, the pulpit and the stage were 
the enuuciators and moulders of public opinion. But 
while there is a great deal of valuable current history 
to be extracted from pulpit utterances of the Reforma- 
tion period, the stage was best adapted to reflect the 
tastes and exhibit the humors of the day. In this 
England and with these inspirations, all sorts and con- 
ditions of men and women thronged the playhouses, 
where they would hear the story of their ancestors told 
in swelling words and their glory sung in martial 
strains : " Wherein," says Thomas Nash, " our fore- 
fathers' valiant acts, that have been long buried in 
rusty brass and worm-eaten books, are revived, and 
they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and 
brought to plead their aged honors in open presence." 

The intellectual soil of that Elizabethan England, 
was thus a veritable hot-house, fertilized by a spirit of 
nationalism which was broadened, deepened, and con- 
tinually nourished, by that colonization of new lands 
which had become a passion with every rank and 
class. 

Shakespeare was stimulated to the production of 
historical dramas, and the people were stimulated by 
their presentation. This reciprocal relation of stage 
and pit is one of the curious phases of the social life 
of the day. 

It is evident that Shakespeare, as a wise and prudent 
playwright, knew his audience, and wrote for it. It is 
also evident that the demand upon him fired his imag- 
ination to its loftiest heights, and plumbed his philo- 
sophical insight to its lowest depths. 

We have a sustained and sometimes, it must be*ad- 



UNITY OF THE PLATS. 7 

mitted, a strained note of eulogy upon all things 
English, which the thoughtful reader will mark as not 
only an ebullition of the Zeit-geist, but an example of 
that insular contempt for all things im-Engiish which 
has not been entirely lost to succeeding generations. 
This was to supply the demand of the "groundlings." 
But we have, too, what no other poet of that day 
offered, in either such kind or degree, the moral of 
England's history, set forth as an interpretation of the 
past and a guide for the future ; all the more valuable 
because not put forth as a theory, and so obtruded 
upon our view. 

This moral will sufficiently appear in the course of 
the following pages and is summed up in the final 
chapter. 

Before taking up the thread of the story, an epitome 
of its contents will be found helpful and suggestive. 

There are ten of the English historical plays in all, 
not written in chronological order, although so ar- 
ranged for convenience in all modern editions. 

Schlegel remarks of them, " The dramas derived from 
the English history are ten in number : one of the most 
valuable works in Shakespeare, and partly the fruit of 
his natural age. I say advisedly one of his works, for 
the poet has evidently intended them as parts of a 
great whole." 

The unity of the series thus noted by the German 
critic is an important consideration in their study. 

An exact title might be accurately stated as " The 
Decline and Fall of the House of Plantagenet, with 
a prologue on King John and an epilogue on Henry 
VIII." The body of the series deals with the house of 



8 THEME OF THE PLAYS. 

Plantageuet from Eichard II. to Eicliard III. It is a 
family struggle for the English throne, varied by 
dreams and actualities of foreign conquest. The 
" seven phials of the sacred blood " of Edward III. are 
nearly all drained in the internecine contest. The 
bloody flux is stayed only by a political marriage, the 
Earl of Eichmond with Elizabeth of York, which seats a 
Tudor where Plantagenets had reigned for generations. 

As a prologue to this story the play of King John 
gives us a glimpse at the conditions which had in them 
the germ not only of division, but of reunion. John's 
England was an example of the futility of attempting 
to hold transmarine heritages or conquests in common 
bonds of interest with the throne of the "sceptred 
isle " of England. The Plantageuet family would not 
learn this lesson, and the Shakespearean epic describes 
the external trials and humiliations which w^ere a con- 
sequence. 

John's England gave utterance to the voice of the 
people also, speaking, with no uncertain sound, through 
the Magna Charta of the Barons, who were, as nearly 
as could be, the representatives of the people in that 
day ; and with faithful pen the poet historian has 
written down the internal misery which followed upon 
the ever-recurring deafness of royal and noble ears to 
the mandates of that voice. So King John, although 
separated by six generations from the first overt event 
in the downfall of the Plantagenets, is a noteworthy 
and necessary preface to that dramatic tale. It may 
be likened to the last w^arning cry of the prophet, who 
then wraps himself in silence and waits for his Word 
to crystallize into Eact. 



EPITOME OF THE PLATS. 9 

The poet maintains tliis silence during the reigns of 
Henry III. and the three Edwards. The leaven is 
working however. In Kichard 11. decay begins. The~ 
king, with his " incurable leakiness of mind," is a prod- 
uct of the times. We pity but hardly condemn him. 
He is the child of those external and internal condi- 
tions of which we have spoken. We realize that the 
usurpation of Bolingbroke is an historical necessity, 
and it is almost with a sense of relief that we throw up 
our caps for Henry lY. And yet Bolingbroke has no 
hereditary right to that title, and in his usurpation of 
the claims of an elder brother's son lies the germ of 
the fratricidal Wars of the Roses. The melancholy 
end of Richard II. is revenged in the gloomy, remorse- 
ful reign of his cousin Henry IV. But now a ray of 
sunlight emerges, from this internal gloom of the Plan- 
tagenet family, as Henry Y. succeeds his father and 
brings the house of Lancaster to its highest pinnacle 
of glory. And yet the seeds of dissolution are shoot- 
ing up through this too fertile soil. For, biding its 
time, the feeble but legitimate house of York is lifting 
its head above the surface of events. To secure in- 
ternal peace Henry Y. picks a foreign quarrel and em- 
barks upon that career of transmarine conquest, the 
glory of which is fallacious because unnatural. Henry 
YI. inherits two kingdoms, and after a reign accented 
by the deeds of a Warwick and upheld by the fiery 
brilliancy of a Margaret of Anjou, dies in the posses- 
sion of six feet of grudging earth. 

Henry YI. is a fruitful study. As in the career of 
King John, Shakespeare shows that positive evil done 
by kings reaps its reward of failure in spite of auda- 



10 CHARACTER CONTRASTS, 

cious boldness and criminal sagacity, so in Henry YI. 
he makes it equally clear that goodness and saintliness 
do not preserve a king from defeat, if he be negatively 
evil. The appeal to God to preserve his kingdom, be- 
cause he himself is a godly man and tells his beads, 
is of no avail unless Henry VI. be a man and plays a 
kingly part. John was weak because he was unkingly 
in his evil. Henry was weak because he was unkingly 
in his virtue. Each earned his defeat, though in a 
different w^ay. 

The poet historian passes over with brief notice the 
reign of Edward IV. and the pathetic episode of Ed- 
ward v., using them as a framework for the last scene 
in the fall of the house of Plautagenet, that of which 
Eichard III. is the central figure. 

There are still " historic doubts " as to the justice of 
assigning Richard to the disgraceful niche he occupies 
in the corridor of English royalty. Shakespeare has 
done more to fix the orthodox impression of the hunch- 
back's character than any writer of formal history. 
And yet he took the foundation and superstructure of 
that characterization from contemporary historians. 
He has simply illuminated and immortalized what he 
found at hand. He may have exaggerated, but he did 
not invent the infernal Duke of Gloster. As an histori- 
cal study this Richard III. is a portrait worthy of 
more than a superficial glance. 

Bolingbroke did accomplish something for England 
as well as for himself in his usurpation. Warwick car- 
ried kings at his girdle, pulling them down and set- 
ting them up, not by intrigue, but by the sword and 
his good right arm. There were confusion and blood 



EPILOGUE OF THE SERIES. 11 

and strife in the reign of Henry YI. and during the 
whole Lancastrian occupation. But there was a noble 
quality in it all. There were problems of large calibre 
involved. 

In Eichard III., while we see the same things ac- 
complished, it is in ignoble ways. The court and the 
council -room smell of chicanery, demagogism, cant. 
Over all, the demon of unholy selfishness broods in 
sullen, snarling possession. The noblest moment of 
Gloster's career is that of his death. He had put all 
to the hazard of battle, and Bosworth Field has its 
heroic side, apart from the victorious Richmond. 

The story that ends with the fall of the last Plantag- • 
enet must have its epilogue, or Shakespeare were no 
true patriot. With an unsparing hand he has uncov- 
ered England's weaknesses and recorded her defeats. 
But all for a purpose — a purpose which we can now 
see, whether or not it was a conscious purpose of the 
poet historian. 

He gives England time to settle do^vn after her ex- 
hausting civil wars, her fallacious foreign essays in con- 
quest, and when he lifts the curtain again it is upon 
that transformed England suggested in the final event 
of the last historical drama in chronological sequence, 
the baptism of Elizabeth, daughter of Henry YIII. 
The murmur of that baby at the font was the first note 
of a splendid roll of harmony which was to thrill and 
inspire the English people as never before. Shall we 
not say as never since ? With that last wave of his 
magic baton, the master singer paused. It was enough. 
The England of Elizabeth was worth all the blood and 
bigotry, the pain and wretchedness, the shock of for- 



12 ANACHRONISMS. 

eign wars and the miseries of civil arms, with which 
her people had been afflicted for three hundred years. 

This is the story of the English plays. They are 
fibres of England's life. 

To object that the liistorical student finds them full of 
anachronisms is nothing to the purpose. That the poet 
is biassed by his own consuming patriotism is still less so. 

We know that in his " King John " no record is made 
of the Great Charter of English liberties, yet through- 
out the play breathes the very spirit of which Magna 
Gharta was but an outward sign. 

Henry VIII. barely mentions the English Keforma- 
tion, yet it is the very story of the Reformation with 
every alternating shade of progress and retrogression 
set down ; every broad and narrow motive indicated ; 
every occasion, political, social, and religious, subtly 
woven throughout its scenes. " Henry YI." is as con- 
fused in its dramatic conceptions as the actual historic 
events were in fact, yet the Wars of the Roses are 
therein better understood as to their causes and in the 
way they sorrowfully touched the great suffering body 
of the English people, than in any severe record of 
the rolls and statutes. 

It is here that the historian and poet becomes the 
illuminator, the prophet, the accurate teacher of reali- 
ties. We people those former centuries with shadows, 
which become more and more attenuated in the hands 
of the dry chronicler. Shakespeare shows these shad- 
ows to have been men and women who lived, loved, 
hated, fought, and died. " Behold therefore, the Eng- 
land of the year 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or 
dreamland, peopled with vaporous Fantasms, Rymer's 



SHAKESPEARE'S ILLUMINATING PEN. 13 

Foedora, and Doctrines of the Constitution ; but a 
green solid place that grew corn and several other 
things. The sun shone on it, the vicissitudes of sea- 
sons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn, 
ditches were dug, furrow fields ploughed, and houses 
built. Day by day all men and cattle rose to labor, 
and night by night returned home to their several 
lairs.. In wondrous Dualism, then as now, lived 
nations of breathing men, alternating in all ways be- 
tween life and death, between joy and sorrow, between 
rest and toil, between hope, hope reaching high as 
heaven, and fear deep as very hell." ^ 

What Carlyle thus says of the year 1200 Js still true 
of the centuries that followed. Shakespeare makes us 
realize this. No periods of English history are so 
well known to the average reader as those illuminated 
by his pen. Henry YII., with many points of ex- 
traordinary dramatic interest, is comparatively un- 
known ; while Henry VI., one of the most unspeakably 
dreary of reigns, with little or nothing in its confused 
and bloody revolutions to attract the reader, is a well- 
articulated bit of the known historical framework of 
England, because the poet philosopher has supplied 
us with '' the inner life of the people in all things." 

As to the poet's patriotic bias, the critic must admit 
it to be a blemish upon his work. Under their proper 
headings instances of this are noted in the following 
pages. It is sufficient here to point out the fact, as, for 
example, in the anti-papal spirit of " King John," the 
partisan unfairness of "Henry Y.," and the brutal mis- 

J Carlyle's Past and Present, Book II., The Ancient Monk, Chap. I. 



14 HIS FATRIOTIG BIAS. 

conception of the character of Joan of Arc in " Henry 
YI." These are blots, indeed ; yet, as compared with 
contemporary writers, Shakespeare was very far in 
advance of his age. While he allow^ed himself to be 
swayed by the applause of the " groundlings," he was 
in truth a veritable reformer of the stage along these 
very lines. There is nothing mean or bitter in his 
bias, while there is much that was evidently the over- 
flowing of a heart devoted to England as to a mother, 
and concerned as deeply for her majesty and honor. 
The speech of dying John of Gaunt in the play of Kich- 
ard 11. is imbued with this spirit of nationalism which 
characterized Shakespeare's whole treatment of English 
history. If he vaunted her glory, he wept for her shame ; 
if he boasted of her victories, he chronicled her defeats. 

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, 

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 

This other Eden, demi -paradise, 

This fortress built by Nature for herself 

Against infection and the hand of war, 

This happy breed of men, this little world, 

This precious stone set in the silver sea, 

Which serves it in the office of a wall, 

Or as a moat defensive in a house. 

Against the envy of less happier lands ; 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, 

Feared for their breed and famous for their birth. 

Renowned for their deeds as far from home 

(For Christian service and true chivalry) 

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry 

Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son.^ 

1 Rich. II. , Act II. , Scene 1. 



CONCLUSION-. 15 

Shakespeare loved his England and so sounded her 
praises. The imagination of the poet seized upon the 
skeleton of the chroniclers and clothed them with flesh 
and blood. 

From King John to Henry VIII., from Magna Char- 
ta to the Reformation, whether conscious or not of 
the splendid scope of his achievement, the poet his- 
torian has sung an immortal epic of the English na-' 
tion, having for its dominant note the passing of 
feudalism and the rise of the common people. 

The germ of this development has never died out 
of the souls of that hardy race whose forefathers crept 
across the gray waste of the German ocean in their 
frail boats of wood and hide, to grapple with unknown 
foes upon unknown shores, and to lay the corner- 
stone of that great and free nation, of whose best life 
Shakespeare was the poet, chronicler, and seer. 



KING JOHN. 

The foundation of Shakespeare's play is an anony- 
mous work in two parts, entitled "The Troublesome 
Raigne of John, King of England, with the discourie 
of King Richard Cordelions Base Sonne (vulgarly 
named the Bastard Fauconbridge). Also the Death 
of King John at Swinsted Abbey. As it was (sun- 
dry times) publikely acted by the Queenes Maisties 
Players, in the honourable Citie of London. Imprint- 
ed at London for Sampson Clarke, and are to be solde 
at his shop, on the back side of the Eoyall Exchange. 
1591. 4°." 

This play was reprinted in 1611, with the initials 
"W. Sh. upon its title page ; but it is conceded on all 
hands that this was a publisher's trick, and not an 
acknowledgment of the poet's authorship. 

Shakespeare's play was published about 1596, in 
quarto ; was mentioned by Francis Meres, in his 
"Wit's Treasury" (1598), and was included in the first 
Folio of 1623, among the " Histories." 



CHRONOLOGY OF KING JOHN. 

1199. John crowned at Westminster, May 27. Arthur Plan- 
tagenet (lineal heir), Duke of Bretagne, asks assistance of 
Philip of France to maintain his rights over the French 
provinces. John enters France with an army to enforce the 
English claim. 

1200. By agreement between John and Philip, Lewis the Dau- 
phin and Blanche of Castile (John's niece) are married, and 
a satisfactory division of the provinces in dispute is made, 
Arthur retaining Brittany. 

1202. Philip breaks this treaty. War resumed. Arthur taken 
prisoner by John. 

1203. Arthur dies under suspicious circumstances at Eouen. 

1204. All Normandy lost to John and united with the crown 
of France. 

1205-7. In the election of an Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope 
Innocent insisted upon his right to nominate Stephen Lang- 
ton. John defies the Pope, maintaining his own supreme 
right of nomination, and refuses to allow Langton at Canter- 
bury. 

1208--9. Interdict and excommunication of John by Innocent 
III. 

1212. Innocent deposes John, and commands Philip of France 
to invade England and carry the sentence into effect. 

1213-14. John, frightened at the result of his opx)Osition to 
the Pope, basely submits and does homage to Eome for his 
crown. English nobles, led by Stephen Langton, confed- 
erate to resent this betrayal of the kingdom and their liber- 
ties. 

1215. Magna Charta signed, but almost immediately violated 
by John, The English nobles appeal to France and promise 
to choose the Dauphin Lewis as their king, if he will help 
them with an army against John. 

1216. The French army comes over. Before battle John dies 
— (Oct. 16). His son is crowned as Henry III., and Lewis 
forced to return to France. 

3 



CHAPTER II. 

KING JOHN. — THE TRANSITION TERIOD. 

Introduction. — Successive waves of conquest that swept over Britain 
and their blending in one strain. — Continental complications. — John's 
incompetency causes loss of foreign territory, and conipletes the soli- 
darity of the English people. — Shakespeare's play covers this transition 
period. — Three historic centres of dramatic action. — (I.) The disputed 
title of King John (a dramatic fiction.) — (II.) The quarrel of John with 
Pope Innocent. — (III.) Magna Charta and revolt of the Barons. — The 
minor events violate historical accuracy and anachronisms abound. — 
The reason found in the poet's adherence to an old play. — Philip of 
France espouses the cause of Arthur Plantagenet. — Chatillon's de- 
mands. — Negotiations ensue. — Arthur's claims abandoned. — The dis- 
puted territory in France given mainly as a dower to Blanche (John's 
niece) on her marriage with Lewis (Philip's son). — Arthur is kept alive 
by poetic license for dramatic purposes. — John's refusal to accept the 
Pope's nomination to the see of Canterbury. — The curse of Rome. — 
Philip of France commissioned to carry it into effect. — Peter of Pom ■ 
fret's prophecy. — John receives his crown as a fief of Rome. — Omis- 
sion of any mention of Magna Charta.— Revolt of the Barons and 
alliance with Prince Lewis of France, who lands with a force in Eng- 
land.— Skirmishing between the King's faction and the Barons.-- -The 
Barons, discovering treasonable intentions on the part of Lewis, be- 
gin to treat with their King —In the middle of negotiations John 
dies.— Lewis dismissed and John's son (as Henry III.) comes to the 
throne. 

Whether designedly or not, Shakespeare fastened 
upon a period for the first, in order of time, of his 
English chronicle plays, which may be accurately dis- 
tinguished as the great turning point of English his- 
torical development. For it was in the reign of that 
most sordid and despicable monarch John Lackland, 
that the nation was severed from Continental embar- 



DATE OF KING JOHN. 19 

rassments by the loss of Normandy and other trans- 
marine provinces, and the English constitution began 
to take deeper root in and flourish out of the religion 
and patriotism of the English people. 

Allusion has been made, in the introduction, to the 
broad stage upon which these historical dramas Avere 
acted, as having had an influence upon their spirit and 
scope. The date of " King John's " appearance, espe- 
cially, may account to a certain extent for the fervid 
nationalism which pervades every scene and inspires 
the utterance of its dramatis personce. It was pro- 
duced in the year 1596, but eight years after the de- 
struction of the Spanish Armada. All Englishmen 
were still thrilling with a hatred of the foreigner, and 
were bound to their Yirgin Queen and to each other 
by ties of a sort of religious patriotism like that which 
moulded the life of the Hebrew people in the first 
days of the conquest under Joshua. 

The interest of this play, however, to modern stu- 
dents, lies not so much in its illustration of the Eng- 
land of Elizabeth as in its interpretation of the Eng- 
land of John. To approach the story of the play with 
a proper appreciation of its historical accuracy, we 
must note in brief the steps that led up to the first 
scene, where the phrase "borrowed majesty" is flung 
at the occupant of the English throne by the French 
ambassador. 

John came oflicially to the throne in 1199, the suc- 
cessor of Richard Coeur de Lion. 

Four generations before this, in 1066, on the field of 
Hastings, died Harold, last of the Saxon kings, and 
William Duke of Normandy came by right of con- 



20 WAVES OF CONQUEST. 

quest to the English throne. Before this conquest by 
the Norman, there is little enough to tell of connected 
English history. From the early occupation by the 
Romans under Julius Caesar, a.d. 24, until Harold ex- 
pired, there had been a long course of successive up- 
heavals and settlements. There were wars on a large 
and small scale ; peoples divided against each other, 
fighting for the love of war, and not for peace ; hordes 
of savage invaders overcoming aboriginal tribes, and 
driving them in torn remnants to the caves of Corn- 
wall and the mountain fastnesses of Wales. 

Wave after wave of conquest swept the island of 
Britain : Danes, Jutes, Angles and Saxons, the two 
latter on the whole predominating. The language of 
these raiders dominated the land as Anglo-Saxon, and 
the name of one tribe, doubtless the bravest and 
hardiest, became the name of the whole miscellaneous 
immigration of pirate settlers, whence from Angle- 
land we have the modern England. 

The final wave of conquest w^as that upon whose 
crest William Duke of Normandy swept into power. 
With W^illiam came prelates, nobles, and men-at-arms, 
and Saxon veins began to run with Norman blood. 
Here was that mingling of races, out of which, as tlio 
elements finally settled, emerged the English people. 

How did it happen that " this sceptred isle " be- 
came Angle-land instead of Norman-land ? 

First of all, the Norman conqueror w^as too wise to 
carry his victory to the point of extermination. He 
did not seek to blot out or drive out the Saxons. The 
common people, serfs and freemen, were of too much 
use as hewers of wood, to be got rid of without grave 



BLENDING OF RAGES. 21 

cause. Even the Saxou tliaues were permitted, here 
and there, not only to occupy their castles and lands, 
but to jningle on nearly equal terms with their con- 
querors. 

The chief reason, however, why the Anglo-Saxon 
rather than the Norman became the parent of civiliza- 
tion in Britain, lay deeper in events than William or 
his nobles could reach. In casting in their lot with 
the Anglo-Saxon people to the extent of adopting 
manners, customs, and finally language, the Normans 
were but going back home. For Angle, Saxon, and 
Norman had a common ancestry in the heart of the 
German forests, and along the slopes of the Scan- 
dinavian hills. Their differences at the time of the 
Conquest were the result of environment. While the 
Angle and Saxon were still lying in their native lairs, 
or embarking on predatory excursions to the low- 
lying, sedgy shores of Britain, their brethren in the 
north, called Northmen, of common race and almost 
common tongue, had descended upon the northwest 
coast of France, where by force of arms they wrested 
a fine province from the French kings, and set up for 
themselves as Dukes of Normandy. They were in 
course of time Gallicised, and in Duke William's time 
were French in everything but blood and name. But 
even then to scratch a Norman was to find a Northman, 
elder brother to Angle, Jute, and Saxon, and kin to the 
people with whom he w^as placed in intimate domestic 
relations by the Conquest. Hence Saxon and Norman 
blended in one not unnatural strain ; and a new people, 

Feared for their breed and famous by their birth, 



22 SOLIDARITY OF THE PEOPLE. 

came into existence — having, in time, the vigor and 
brawn of the ancient sea-kings and marauders, united 
with the wit, polish, and finesse of the Norman 
knight. 

This did not happen easily or all at once. There 
were continuous battles, feuds, race troubles, and rival- 
ries ; but when John came to the throne, four fruitful 
generations after the battle of Hastings, these internal 
broils had ceased. The names Saxon and Norman 
were forgotten, and only Englishmen remained. 

One important element in the development of the 
English as a homogeneous people remained to be 
added. Her kings were still half foreigners. The 
Norman provinces were appanages of the royal family. 
The political life of the growing English people was 
thus bound up in an unnatural manner with what was 
practically a province of France. It remained there- 
fore, in the curious irony of historical evolution, for 
the reign of one of the least patriotic of English kings 
to witness the beginnings of a larger and more splendid 
life for the English people. For, through John's shuf- 
fling, time-serving, and criminal incapacity, Normandy 
was cut off from allegiance to the royal house of Eng- 
land. Thereafter, with no foreign interests to clash, 
and perhaps take precedence of those at home — with 
no alien quarrels for which they were bound to become 
responsible — the English people grew together more 
closely and with a greater identity of aim. 

Shakespeare's play of " King John " is a dramatic 
picture of this transition stage of English history. 

Observing carefully the action of the play, it is 
found to revolve about three distinct historical events, 



THREE CENTBES OF ACTION. 23 

Avliich are, however, more or less confused with each 
other for dramatic purposes : 

I. The disputed title of John, and the political in- 
trigues of Philip of France resulting therefrom, includ- 
ing the use of Arthur, John's nephew, as a movable 
pawn by all parties. 

II. The quarrel of King John with Pope Innocent 
III. concerning the filling of the vacant see of Canter- 
bury, which ended in John's disgraceful reconciliation, 
at the price of holding the crown of England as a fief 
of the Pope. 

III. The revolt of the Barons, which the poet attrib- 
utes to discontent over the violent death of Arthur, 
but which historically was caused by the king's at- 
tempted nullification of Magna Charta. 

This is the framework of Shakespeare's play. In 
the essential facts he preserves the spirit and history 
of the times, but in some glaring instances is far astray. 
The reader who knows history and reads this play for 
the first time, and superficially, is tempted to make 
the criticism that either the poet was not acquainted 
with the reign he describes, or that he ruthlessly sacri- 
ficed historical accuracy on the altar of dramatic ne- 
cessity. In both judgments there is a measure of 
truth. Shakespeare was never troubled by anachro- 
nisms when they served his purpose, and in this play, 
contrary to his usual custom, he did not consult the 
chroniclers who Avere his faithful allies for all the 
others of the series. There is not an allusion in the 
whole play, exempli gratia, to the greatest event not 
only of John's reign but, in one aspect certainly, of all 
English history, the granting of Magna Charta. Many 



24 SOURCE OF THE PLAT. 

of the events leading up to and evoking it are touched 
upon, and the especial event which occurred because 
of its attempted nullification is minutely detailed, 
namely, the calling over of Prince Lewis, of France, 
to lead Englishmen against their king ; but this event 
is linked with the alleged death of Arthur at John's 
command, and the Great Charter is not so much as 
mentioned. 

The explanation is simple enough, however. Shake- 
speare did not look into the chronicles here as wdien 
he dealt with other periods ; but, finding an old play 
by another hand, remodelled it for his own need. The 
real source, the general framework, and many of 
the passages, barely disguised, of the play of " King 
John " are to be found in a piece in two parts, by an 
anonymous author (some attribute it to Samuel 
Eowley), entitled " The Troublesome Raigne of King 
John." This was written or at least published some 
twenty years before Shakespeare's performance, and 
was plainly a tractate against Eome, one of the swarm 
that sprang into life in the first 3'ears of the Reforma- 
tion. It was rabid, ill-tempered, and frequently un- 
fair, and Shakespeare wisely, both for his fame and 
his art, did not decant its spirit into his performance. 
An occasional quotation of parallel passages will give 
the student opportunity to note how the great dram- 
atist, while sometimes copying slavishly from material 
at hand, almost always transmuted the base metal of 
others into the fine gold which was all his own. 

To resume the thread of history where the play of 
'' King John " takes it up, it begins with a claim made 
upon John of England, by Philip of France, for the 



GHATILLON'8 DEMANDS. 25 

crown of England and all its territories, together with 
the Norman provinces, in the name of Arthur Plan- 
tagenet, John's nephew. 

Chatillon, the French ambassador, speaks : 

PhiUp of France, in right and true behalf 
Of thy deceased brother Geoffrey's son, 
Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim 
To this fair island and the territories, 
To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine ; 
Desiring thee to lay aside the sword 
Which sways usurpingly these several titles, 
And put the same into young Arthur's hand, 
Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.' 

The " Troublesome Eaigne " has it : 

" Philip, by the grace of God most Christian king 
of France, having taken into his guardian and pro- 
tection Arthur, Duke of Britaine, sonne and heir to 
Jeffrey thine elder brother, requireth in the behalf of 
said Arthur, the kingdom of England, with the lord- 
ships of Ireland, Poitiers, Aniow, Torain, Main ; and 
I attend thine annswere." 

Before this formal claim is made, Chatillon sets the 
key of the whole play as follows : 

Thus, after greeting, speaks the king of France, 

In my behavior, to the majesty, 

The borrow'd majesty of England here.^ 

That phrase the "borrowed majesty" is a reflection 
upon the title by which John reigned in England as 
well as over the French provinces which were an in- 

1 Act I. Scene 1. 2 Ibid. 



26 STRENGTH OF JOHN'S TITLE. 

lieritaiice of the Angevins. Shakespeare, following the 
old play, assumes that John was an usurper, and that 
the English peoj^le were at heart devoted to the claims 
of young Arthur Plantagenet. The French provinces 
and Arthur's rights over them will be touched upon 
presently. Just now it must be madeN clear to the 
reader who "takes his history from Shakespeare and 
his theology from Milton," that this alleged usurpation 
of the English crown was a mere assumption of the 
poet, of which he makes vivid dramatic use in the sor- 
rows of young Arthur. King John of England had, 
for those days, a particularly strong title. He was the 
oldest living brother of Richard L, whom he succeeded, 
and had acquired reputation and influence, as a sort of 
deputy, during the Lion Heart's crusades against the 
Saracens. When Richard died, it is true that, accord- 
ing to strict laws of primogeniture, the heir of the 
throne was Arthur Plantagenet, son of John's dead 
elder brother Geoffrey. But primogeniture had not 
by any means been accepted as the only law of suc- 
cession to the English throne. Nor indeed have the 
English people ever been so wedded to the law of 
primogeniture but that for good and sufficient reason 
they could break it. The names of Henry lY., Oliver 
Cromwell, and William of Orange, testify to the exist- 
ence of this inherent independence of the people, who 
have ever been the king-makers themselves, in one form 
or another, and never surrendered their rights. 

King John succeeded legitimately to the throne by 
virtue of three claims : (a) Nearness of kin to the late 
monarch, (b) A revised will of Richard, quoted by 
contemporary chroniclers, setting aside a former be- 



PRINCE ARTHUR'S CLAIMS. 27 

stowal of the crown upon Arthur, because of his youth 
and weakness, and bestowing it upon John, (c) And 
most important and conclusive of all, a free election of 
the Barons, representing the whole realm, among 
whom he was crowTied at Westminster. For those 
days this constituted a good title. Shakespeare, how- 
ever, has so fastened the idea of usurpation upon the 
English mind, that John has had added to his other 
crimes that of being, what he certainly was not, an 
unconstitutional ruler. There Avas never any question 
^mong Englishmen as to his right to reign- over them, 
until ' toward the end of his career, when the Barons 
were exasperated into the attempt of dethroning him 
as a liar, a slanderer, a breaker of promises, and a bawd 
of the nation's honor. 

It must also be noted in the interest of historic truth 
(although it is no part of the author's purpose or in- 
tention to go into the details of these events), that the 
French king did not make the claim, as in the play, 
for the crown of England, but in behalf of Arthur 
solely for the transmarine provinces. Arthur's claims 
to these provinces were partly in virtue of his lineal 
right to the throne of England, and partly through 
other sources. The conflicting and overlapping claims 
of John and his nephew are thus clearly stated by Mr. 
Henry Hudson in his introduction to this play : 

" Anjou, Touraine, and Maine were the proper pat- 
rimony of the Plantagenets, and therefore devolved to 
Arthur as the acknowledged representative of that 
house, the rule of lineal succession being there fully 
established. To the ducal chair of Bretagne, Arthur 
was the proper heir in right of his mother (Constance) 



28 TRUCE BETWEEN PHILIP AND JOHN. 

who was then Duchess regnant of that province. John 
claimed the dukedom of Normandy as the proper in- 
heritance from his ancestor, William the Conqueror, 
and his claim was there admitted. Poitou, Guienne, 
and five other French provinces w^ere the inheritance 
of Eleanor his mother ; but she made over her title to 
him, and there also his claim was recognized. The 
English crown he claimed in virtue of his brother's 
will, but took care to strengthen that claim by a par- 
liamentary election. In the strict order of inheritance 
all these possessions, be it observed, were due to Ar- 
thur ; but that order it appears was not then fully es- 
tablished, save in the provinces belonging to the house 
of Anjou. As Duke of Bretagne, Arthur was a vassal 
of France, and therefore bound to homage as a condi- 
tion of his title." 

In this complex condition of affairs Philip Augustus 
of France saw an opportunity of striking a final blow 
at the power of the Plantagenet family and dissolving 
the connection which had existed, since the Norman 
conquest, between the English monarchy and French 
provinces. He lent himself therefore the more readily 
to the interests of Arthur Plantagenet. 

The first two acts of the play are occupied with 
negotiations between France and England, ostensibly 
over Arthur's rights, actually with diplomatic fencing 
for political advantage. These tilts end, after many 
complications of intrigue and policy, in the completion 
of a truce between Philip and John, in which the cause 
of Arthur is entirely set aside as of slight importance 
in the larger affairs of kings. John retains a portion 
of the disputed territory, and another portion is set 



DEATH OF ARTHUR. 29 

aside as a marriage dower for the Lady Blanche, of 
Castile, John's niece, on her union with Prince Lewis, 
Philip's son and heir. Arthur was confirmed in his 
dukedom of Brittany. 

During the course of these two acts, while very few 
of the recorded incidents are historically accurate, the 
spirit of the times is admirably preserved, and the rela- 
tions of personages and events are set forth with faith- 
fulness. If we should attempt to trace every poetic 
statement to its historical source, we should find our- 
selves in a preposterous entanglement. But having 
concern only with the broad movements of English 
life, Shakespeare is a vivid and lucid interpreter. 

John maintained his authority in the transmarine 
provinces, with now and then a rebellion on the part 
of the French nobles, until he was mortally crippled 
by the refusal of his English knights to aid him in 
quelling these revolts, which sometimes assumed seri- 
ous shape. During these conflicts, John took Arthur 
prisoner, who afterward died mysteriously, some say 
by the hand of John himself. All historians attribute 
truth to the public fame that the unnatural king was 
directly or indirectly responsible for his nephew's 
death. Shakespeare, following the scheme of the 
" Troublesome Eaigne," shows that, while John made 
his plot with Hubert de Burg for Arthur's sudden 
taking off, he was so frightened at the public storm 
the report of violence created, that he repented and 
bitterly reproached his Chamberlain for taking him 
too literally at his word. Arthur, in both plays, is 
spared by Hubert, and is accidentally killed in an 
attempt to escape from prison. 



30 DRAMATIC USE OF ARTHUR. 

Shakespeare keeps Arthur alive, after the fashion of 
the old play, for some years after the real date of his 
death, and uses him as a dramatic puppet in events 
which had no relation whatever Avith him or his claims 
upon the English throne. Indeed this use of Arthur 
Plantagenet is the great puzzle in any effort to discrim- 
inate between what is historical in the play and what is 
purely dramatic license. The reader of the play must 
infer that this twelve-year old boy was the central fig- 
iire of human and political interest in the England of 
that day. He was nothing of the kind. He was of 
very small importance in the actual shuffling of the 
cards. B\it he- offered dramatic material of consid- 
erable value, and Shakespeare used him, as the older 
dramatist did, without reference to the chronicles 
and with no attempt at preserving the real perspective 
of histor}^ 

Thus the assumed position of Arthur, as an abused 
and oppressed rightful claimant to the throne, is con- 
nected, on no legitimate grounds whatever, with the 
quarrel between the Pope and King John ; and also 
with the revolts of the Barons. All the critics note the 
importance attributed by the play to Arthur's move- 
ments, but not all of them point out the gross anach- 
ronism thus involved. 

To illustrate the tortuous politics of those times — 
which, with many a misdate, overdate, and prolepsis, 
Shakespeare still preserves in their essential spirit, 
presenting withal a tolerable estimate of how life in 
camps and courts was carried on — the speech of Fal- 
conbridge at the end of the second act may be quoted. 
It is a summing up of what had been accomplished as 



THE FAITH OF KINGS. 31 

well as attempted in the royal quarrels over Arthur, 
and a most just estimate of the reliance to be i^laced 
upon the sworn faith of king and noble in tlie twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries. 

Mad world, mad kings, mad composition. 
John, to stop Arthur's title to the whole. 
Hath willingly departed with a part ; 
And France (whose armor conscience buckled on, 
Whom zeal and charity brought to the field _ 
As God's own soldier), rounded in the ear 
With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, 
That broker that still breaks the pate of faith, 
That daily break-vow, he that wins of all, 

That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling commodity- 
Commodity, the bias of the world ; 

And this same bias, this commodity. 

This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, 

Clapp'd on the outwa'rd eye of fickle France, 

Hath drawn him from his own determined aid, 

From a resolved and honorable war, 

To a most base and vile concluded peace. 

Since kings break faith upon commodity, 
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.^ 

In such a passage as this we are able to weigh and 
estimate the value of Shakespeare's contribution to the 
philosophy of history. We ' are often bewildered in 
his pages by a confusion of dates and events, but his- 
tory rightly studied is something more than mere an- 
nals or chronicles. These are the raw materials which 

1 Act II. , Scene 2. 



32 '' CHAR0E8 OF WARRE." 

the historian must explain and interpret or he be no 
true historian. 

There are two most significant lines in the earlier 
portion of the play which illustrate the poet's method 
of transmuting whole reams of fact and poetry into a 
single paragraph of description. The lines are : 

Our abbeys and our priories shall pay 
V' This expedition's charge.^ 

In the "Troublesome Eaigne " the corresponding 
passage is : 

And toward the maine charges of my warres, 

He ceaze the lasie Abbey lubbers' lands 

Into my hand to pay my men of warre. 

The Pope and Popelings shall not grease themselves 

With gold and groates that are the soldiers' due. 

The anonymous play has also an exciting and sugges- 
tive scene in which Philip Falconbridge makes a raid 
upon the abbeys for moneys, which is omitted in the 
play of King John. But the two lines just quoted tell 
the wdiole story, and for dramatic purposes tell it better 
than the old writer's pages of bold and coarse attack 
upon the lives of the monks and nuns. Eulers in those 
times might be ever so faithful sons of Holy Church ; 
but when there was need of the " charges of warre," 
they did not hesitate long between their piety and their 
necessities. 
^ The next centre of action of Shakespeare's play, 

after the disputed title of John and the political in- 

1 Act I., Scene 1. 



THE WAIL OF CONSTANCE. 33 

trigues that were involved, is the quarrel between Pope 
Innocent and John of England. 

It must be said of John that he was a stubborn 
man if not a truly courageous one, to brave the power 
of the Pope of Rome, with the memory still fresh of 
his father Henry creeping to the tomb of Becket in 
old Canterbury, a shivering penitent. 

Henry II. was a far braver and better man than 
John, and had quite as good a cause. Moreover, he 
was a born ruler of men, and John was, in moral 
stamina, the most fickle and nerveless of leaders. 

The beginning of the third act is an historical rem- 
nant left over from the second. It is the wail of 
Constance, mother of Arthur, for the shameful way 
in which his claim had been forgotten, in the selfish 
arrangement of the two kings and the marriage of 
Blanche and Lewis. 

Constance. Gone to be married. Gone to swear a peace. 

False blood to false blood joined. Gone to be friends. 
Shall Lewis have Blanche ? and Blanche those iDi'Ovinces ? 
It is not so. Thou hast mispoke, misheard ; 

Believe me, I do not believe thee, man ; 
I have a king's oath to the contrary.' 

And when the poor mother is assured beyond doubt 
that the compromise is made : 

O ! if thou teach me to believe this sorrow, 
Teach thon this sorrow how to make me die ; 

Lewis marry Blanche. O boy, then where art thou ? 
Fi-ance friend with England, what becomes of me ?"^ 

• Act III.. Scene 1. -Ibid. 



34 PANDULPH'S MISSION. 

The grief of Constance is broken in upon by the en- 
trance of the two kings, the newly married pair, and 
others, in the full flush of their recent joy. Her re- 
proaches of them are interrupted by an influx of new 
characters, and the beginning of the great quarrel 
between John and the Pope. 

It has been already said that the history is here 
thrown to the winds, for purposes of the drama. Ar- 
thur had been dead for some years before the eccle- 
siastical censures of the Church were visited upon his 
uncle. But Shakespeare, following the old play, vio- 
lates the fact, in the introduction of Constance and 
Arthur as though contemporary with Pandulph. To 
the parties of the historic drama, grouped upon the 
stage, comes Pandulph, announced by Philip : 

" Here comes the lioly legate of the Pope." 

To connect this with the story, we must recall one or 
two historic facts. At a vacancy in the see of Canter- 
bury the Pope rejected the choice of an archbishop Avho 
had the sanction of King John, and nominated his 
own candidate, Stephen Langton, whom John refused 
to receive. It might have been obstinacy, or as he 
thought good policy, on the part of the English king 
to resent the constant intrusion of the Pope in the 
<f ecclesiastical affairs of England. Doubtless he was 
really actuated by the spirit which has ever lain, now 
dormant, now active, in the heart of the English 
Church and which culminated and expressed itself in 
the Keformation of the sixteenth century. England 
had always protested, sometimes with success, soine- 



THE CURSE OF ROME. 35 

times in vain, against the idea of a universal bishop 
as accented in the see of Rome. The autonomy of , " 
the English church and the autonomy of the English (^^j 
people were ideas not always consciously, but always ']^^\j^0 
actually held in the intelligence of the nation as it 
grew to maturit3^ 

So John, in resenting the imposition of an Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury against his will, was, from what- 
ever motive, acting in harmony with the development 
of English thought and the evolution of the English 
ideal. 

The Pope sent over his legate, as in the play, to 
argue with John, and transmitted through the same 
messenger a valuable present of four golden rings, set 
with precious stones, as a sort of political retaining 
fee. Either the bribe was too small or John's con- 
science was aroused, for the legate was authorized to 
" launch the curse of Eome " reserved for extreme 
cases. This scene, first of the third act, after the en- 
trance of Pandulph, is wholly accurate as to the spirit 
of the event, and presents one of those fine outbursts 
of patriotic pride and national independence, for 
which the age in which Shakespeare wrote, just after 
the destruction of the Spanish Armada, was especially 
ripe, and was indeed the very offspring of the times 
themselves. 

Pandulph. I, Pandulph, of fair MiLan cardinal 
And from Pope Innocent the legate here, 
Do in his name religiously demand 
Why thou against the Church, our holy mother, 
So wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce 
Keep Stephen Langton, chosen Archbishop 



36 JOHN'S DEFIANCE. 

Of Canterbnrj, from that liolv see ? 
This, in our foresaid holy father's name, 
Pope Innocent, I do demand of thee. 

K. John. What earthly name to interrogatories 
Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 
Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name 
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous, 
To charge me to an answer, as the Pope. 
Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England 
Add thus much more ; that no Italian i)riest 
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions; 
But, as we under heaven are supreme head, 
So under him that great supremacy. 
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold 
Without the assistance of a mortal hand ; 
So tell the Pope ; all reverence set apart 
To him and his usurped authority.' 

These words were like sweet houey to the Yirgin 
Queen, Elizabeth, to whom undoubtedly Shakespeare 
paid his court in writing them. For she had been 
through exactly such a papal struggle as was now to 
follow in the case of John. She felt the " supreme 
headship" of the Church as keenly as any who pre- 
ceded or followed her. Largely through her person- 
ality, which was a sort of concretion of the English 
thought and English feeling of the day, England was 
an armed camp of religious and patriotic soldiers. It 
was an intense age and the ideal England of Eliz£ibeth, 
of her nobles, of her commoners, was just that ex- 
ploited in Shakespeare's line, 

That no Italian priest 
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions. 

1 Act III., Scene 1. 



EXTnEME MEA^niE.< OF THE POPE. 37 

We find the basis of this fine speech in the " Trouble- 
some Kaigne," and if we bear in mind the splendid pe- 
riods, just quoted, of Sliakesj)eare, and compare with 
them these words from the older play, we will have a 
fair example of the way in which Shakespeare was wont 
to use the material of others and make it peculiarly his 
own. 

K. John. And what hast thou, or the Pope, thy maister, to 
doo, to demand of me, how I employ mine own? Know, Sir 
Priest, as I know the Church and holy churchmen, so I scorn to 
be subject to the greatest prelate in the world. Tell thy mais- 
ter so from me, and say John of England said it, that never an 
Italian priest of them all shall ever have tythe, tole or polling 
penie out of England ; but as I am King, so will I raigne next 
under God, supreme head both over spiritual and temrall ; and 
hee that contradicts me in this, He make him hoppe headless. 

To resume the theme of the play. Pandulph pro- 
ceeds to extreme measures. 

Pandulph. Then, by the lawful power that I have, 
Thou shalt stand cursed and excommunicate ; 
And blessed shalt he be that doth revolt 
From his allegiance to an heretic ; 
And meritorious shall that hand be called, 
Canonized, and worshipped as a saint, 
That takes away by any secret course 
Thy hateful life.' ' 

This curse of the poet, set down in a few lines and 
as though pronounced at one breath, really involved 
four separate acts of the Pope against John and cov- 
ered some years of time. First was the interdict, by 

1 Act III., Scene 2. 



38 PHILIP E3IPL0YED AGAINST JOHN. 

wliicli all bishops and clergy were forbidden to say the 
religious offices of the Church throughout the king- 
dom.^ 

This, failing of its intended effect, was followed by 
excommunication, which was to shut out John from all 
personal intercourse with his people. This, in turn, 
was succeded by a decree absolving John's subjects 
from their allegiance ; and finally was pronounced a 
sentence of deposition from the throne of England. 
The great quarrel began in 1207, and John did not 
make his submission until 1213. Meanwhile the Pope 
must needs find force of arms to bring John to terms, 
and Philip of France, having previously won from John 
all practical foothold in Normandy, is found ready at 
the Pope's appeal to try for the crown of England. 
War is therefore declared between the two powers, and 
it is declared a holy war for the honor of the Cross, all 
privileges granted to crusaders being promised by the 
Pope to Philip and his knights. 

Shakespeare tacks together the formerly made truce 
between Philip and John, cemented by the marriage of 
Blanche and Lewis, and this new outbreak. Although 
not historically accurate, therefore, the events depicted 
in this first scene of the third act are relatively so. We 
, have a fresh-made compact broken for selfish reasons ; 
we have the pathetic and touching by-play of the 
newly married happiness of the young people threat- 
ened and rudely brushed aside as of no importance 
compared with the affairs of kingdoms. 

1 Hume's description of the eflfect of the interdict is probably one of the 
finest passages in his history, and should be read by all who wish to realize 
the awful nature of the event.— Hume's England, Vol. I., Chap. 11. 



CONFUSION OF THE HISTORY. 39 

" What," cries poor tortured Blanche ; 

' ' Shall our feast be kept with slaughtered men ? 
Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums, 
Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomj) ? 

husband, hear me. Ah, alack ! how new 
Is husband in my mouth ; even for that name, 
Which till this time my tongue did ne'er pronounce, 
Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms 

Against mine uncle." 

And again : 

Which is the side that I must go withal ? 

1 am with both ; each army hath a hand ; 
And in their rage, I having hold of both, 
Thev whirl asunder and dismember me. 



Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose.' 



But the love sorrows of a young couple, wedded out of 
policy, can never stand in the way of policy, and all 
private ties become as nothing before the necessities of 
state. 

The rest of the act is taken up wdth the contest be- 
tween the two kings, in which the seizing of Ai'thur by 
John plays a part, although historically Arthur has 
been dead three or four years. Toward the last of the 
act the historical facts are tangled together in absolute 
confusion. This struggle of the kings glides poetically 
into a plot arranged between the Pope's legate and the 
young French prince, Lewis, for the latter to enter 
England with an army and seize the throne on behalf 

1 Act III. , Scene 1. 



40 nif^CONTENT OF THE ENCTJi^IL 

ol Blanche, his wife, the niece of John. This is based 
in the play upon the disturbed relations between John 
and his English barons on account of the imprisonment 
of Arthur. 

The situation was really this : At the request of the 
Pope, and to enforce his nomination of Langton, Philip 
had prepared an immense army for the invasion of 
England. The English barons were discontented with 
John's arbitrary, vacillating, and selfish policy. The 
English clergy almost to a man were arrayed against 
John because of his stubborn fight over the See of 
Canterbury, and the mass of the people were restless 
and frightened because of the withdrawal of religious 
functions and, in that superstitious age, were looking 
for trouble and disaster, finding strange omens and 
auguries in earth, sea, and sky. Agitators, taking ad- 
vantage of this unsettled state of affairs, pushed their 
own disaffections industriously, and John was looked 
upon by all classes as the cause of their woes. 

The papal legate is represented by Shakespeare as 
translating these signs of the times to Lewis, Avhile 
urging him to take advantage of them to lay his claim 
through Blanche to the English throne. The passage 
is well worth remembering as indicative of the worldly- 
wise policy of the Roman See of that day in dealing 
with its enemies : 

Pdndulpli. You, in tlie right of Ladv Blanche, your wife, 
May then make all the claim that Arthur did. 

Lewis. And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did. 

Pandulph. How green you are, and fresh in this old world ; 
John lays you jilots ; the times conspire with you ; 



PETER OF POMFRET. 41 

This act so evilly borne shall cool the hearts 
Of all his j)eople and freeze up their zeal 
That none so small advantage shall step forth 
To check his reign, but they will cherish it ; 
No natural exhalation in the sky, 
No scope of nature, no distempered day, 
No common wind, no customed event, 
But they will pluck away his natural cause, 
And call them meteors, prodigies and signs. 
Abortives, presages and tongues of heaven, 
Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.' 

And, again, when Falconbridge, ever faithful to the 
king, comes to him with reports of how affairs are 
progressing in the matter of despoiling the abbeys for 
war charges, he says : 

Bastard. How I have sped among the clergymen 
The sums I have collected shall express. 
But as I travelled hither through the land, 
I find the people strangely fantasied, 
Possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams. 
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear. 
And here's a prophet that I brought with me 
From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found 
With many hundreds treading on his heels ; 
To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes, 
That e'er the next Ascension day at noon 
Your highness should deliver up your crown. =^ 

Unquestionably John's superstitious nature was so 
wrought upon by this alleged prophecy — for Shake- 
speare's Peter of Pomfret was really a vagrant fanatic 
who uttered the prophecy as recorded — that his fears 
brought about what neither threats of Pope nor armies 

1 Act III., Scene 4. 2 Act IV., Scene 3. 



42 JOHN'S SUBMISSION TO ROME. 

of king had moved him to do. He succumbed before 
the lunatic chatter of a wandering mountebank, who 
had stood unshaken under the excommunication of 
Innocent III., and had not quailed in the presence of 
the greatest soldier of his times. 

On that very Ascension day, John submitted to the 
Pope ; agreed to all his terms ; received Stephen 
Langton as Archbishop ; and, most shameful of all, 
yielded up his crown to the Pope's legate, and after 
waiting five days received it back again as a gift from 
the Pope, promising to hold his kingdom in submis- 
sion to Kome as feudal lord, and to pay a certain sum 
of money annually as token of the tributary relations 
of England to the " Italian priest," he had formerly so 
bravely scouted. 

The submission being made, Philip was commanded 
by the Pope to make a truce with John. The rage of 
the French king was fierce, but fruitless. The fleet he 
had prepared for the conquest of England Avas de- 
stroyed, and he gave up English afiairs in disgust. He 
then turned his attention to a war with Otto, Emperor 
of Germany, and finally established his power, as the 
arbiter of European Continental politics. 

Shakespeare, following the older play, identifies the 
turning back of Philip from his attack upon England 
with the turning back of Lewis, who was summoned 
some years later by the English nobles to their aid. 
As a matter of history, all of those scenes which in the 
play have to do with the papal interference against 
Prince Lewis, on behalf of John, were actually true as 
toward King Philip, after the submission of John. 

To get at the true history again, we must leave the 



MAGNA CHART A. 43 

point where Pandulph is inciting the French prince to 
claim England in behalf of his wife, and go back to 
summarize the events which led up to the calling over 
of Lewis by the English nobility, which this passage 
suggests. 

After his reconciliation with the Pope, John's 
troubles were by no means ended. Eeleased from the 
distress of the excommunication he found himself at 
odds with barons and people. He hanged Peter of 
Pomfret on the historic Ascension Day, but the people 
knew that Peter had turned out a true prophet. John 
himself is made to acknowledge it at Shakespeare's 
mouth : 

K. John. Is this Ascension day ? Did not prophet 
Say that before Ascension day at noon 
My crown I should give off? Even so I have ; 
I did suppose it should be on constraint ; 
But, heaven be thanked, it is but voluntary.' 

This national humiliation entered like iron into the 
souls of England's proud nobility. It had a powerful -^^^ 
effect in the disaffection, rebellion, and revolt, which * 

finally culminated in the wresting from John of the ^^^^^' 
Magna Cliarta, the great Charter of English liberties, JJ^ti 
one of the great and crucial turning points of Eng- 
lish history, and immeasurably the event of great- 
est importance in John's reign. The Charter was 
given by John finally, and a council of the barons 
chosen to see that it should be faithfully carried out. 
But John was shifty and vacillating as ever. After 

1 Act v., Scene 1. 



44 llEVOLT OF THE BAROX.^. 

granting the Charter, he sought to evade it in all pos- 
sible ways ; withdrew himself from all intercourse with 
his barons, and finally collected about him a large 
arm 3^ composed of many of his own subjects, " lewd 
fellows of the baser sort," who saw nothing to lose and 
much to gain in the overthrow of the nobility — soldiers 
of fortune, and mercenary troops from Normandy and 
other places on the Continent. The mass of the 
English people in deadly terror of civil war, and 
taught by long ages of use, to bow meekly to the 
strong hand and oppressive laAvs of the powers that 
be, failed to support the barons, who in desperation 
finally turned their eyes to France, and elected Lewis, 
the son of Philip, in the right of his wife, Blanche, 
niece of John, their king and leader. 

The patriotic Englishmen who may question the 
policy of this desperate course, because it turned out 
badly, will remember, however, that under similar cir- 
cumstances William of Orange was chosen and en- 
throned King of England, by the lords and commons, 
nearly five hundred years later. The revolution of 
1688 succeeded, and that of 1216 failed, both for good 
and sufficient reasons. But according to this measure 
of worldly success or failure, the one is called a " glo- 
rious revolution," and the other a dismal rebellion ; the 
one is counted a shining page in English history, the 
other a dismal record to be blotted out of the memory 
of England's sons. 

Again, however, we must disentangle our minds 
from the inaccuracies of Shakespeare's historical rec- 
ord. He assumes, a,Q;ain copying the "Troublesome 
Raigne," all throughout those portions of the play 



UNHISTOlllC USE OF ARTHUR. 45 

which deal with the sullen humors of the people and 
the rising discontent of the barons, that these unhappy 
circumstances are due to reports of the imprisonment 
of Arthui-. The Earl of Pembroke, answering the 
kins, who asks: 



'O' 



What you would have reformed that is uot well ; 
And well shall you perceive how willingly 
I will both hear and grant you your requests, 



says 



Pemhrokn. Then I, as one that am the tongue of these 
To sound the purposes of all their hearts, 
Both for myself and them, but chief of all 
Your safety (for the which myself and them 
Bend their best studies), heartily request 
The enfranchisement of Arthur ; whose restraint 
Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent 
To break into this dangerous argument. ' 

But, as already noted, Arthur had been dead for ten 
years before the revolt of the barons which ended in 
the giving of Magna Charta, and twelve years before 
Lewis was chosen to lead the barons against John. 
Moreover, there is no contemporary history to bolster 
the deduction that Arthur's affairs ever had much sym- 
pathy, as for his claims against their own king, 
among the English people. Shakespeare has so dom- 
inated the true history, by his wondrous picture of a 
fair sweet boy deprived of his rights by a brutal ty- 
rant, who was hated by the people for such a black 
crime, that the average reader of history is insensibly 

1 Act IV. Scene 2. 



46 CHANGE OF PARTIES. 

led to adopt it as true. The reason for idealizing a 
boy of ten or twelve years, with presumably all the 
rough edges of that period of a lad's life, may be two- 
fold. First, it was necessary to the making of an act- 
ing play that the pathetic element should not only be 
included, but carefully exploited, as is the case in the 
drama of our own day ; and second, as Bi chard Grant 
White suggests in one of his studies in Shakespeare, 
the poet's " only son Hamnet died at the age of eleven 
years in 1596, and that ' King John ' was written in 
that year. It would seem as if the lovely character of 
Arthur (which is altogether inconsistent with the facts 
of history) was portrayed, and the touching lament of 
Constance for his loss written by Shakespeare, with 
the shadow of this bereavement upon his soul." 

The true reason for the calling over of Lewis was, 
as has already been pointed out, the nullification of 
Magna Charta by John. Note now hoAv in the whirli- 
gig of time the parties to this human drama had 
shifted ground. Stephen Langton, who had been 
forced by the Pope upon John, was the head and front 
of the barons' cause in securing the great Charter. 
The Pope, upon the complaint of John, was incensed 
against Langton and. the barons, for getting the Char- 
ter without his consent as feudal lord of England. 
Lewis, the French prince, formerly the ally of the 
Pope against the king and barons, was now the ally 
of the barons against the Pope and king. 

The play brings the army of Lewis to halt, after 
some large successes, by the submission of John to 
the Eoman see. As we know, however, this interfer- 
ence of the Pope had been against the army of Philip. 



DEATH OF JOHN. 47 

While the events of the last scenes of the play there- 
fore are very fairly accurate, they are so turned out of 
their order in time, as well as twisted as to the rela- 
tions of the prime actors, that there is not room for 
the smallest pretence to suppose that Shakespeare ever 
consulted history at all in the construction of this play. 

The barons began to grow tired of their bargain 
with Lewis. Humors came to their ears that he was 
only waiting to be seated fairly on the throne, to cast 
them off and probably kill the most distinguished of 
them, in order to replace them in the affairs of state 
with Frenchmen from among his own nobles. It began 
to look indeed like another conquest of the islanders, 
by another French invasion. The English barons 
weakened in their allegiance to the prince they had 
sworn the most solemn oaths to support. John was 
still holding out, but messengers were passing between 
him and the fickle barons. Suddenly John, retreating 
after some repulse, was overtaken with mortal sickness 
at Swinstead Abbey. It was reported that he was 
poisoned by the monks. At all events he died sud- 
denly, and the rebellion of the barons came to an un- 
timely end. Lewis, albeit somewhat indignant, was 
persuaded to go back to France, not as in the play by 
threats of the Pope's legate, but by force of circum- 
stances, the falling away of the leaders by whom alone 
he could be maintained on English soil for a day. 

The young son of John (Henry III.) was crowned 
king, and the Earl of Pembroke appointed regent. 
Against such odds Lewis could not reasonably contend, 
and he disappeared forever as a factor in English 
politics. 



48 LEGEND OF SWINSTEAD ABBEY. 

So John died and his " troublesome raigne " came 
to an end. The implication of Shakespeare that the 
king Avas poisoned is based upon the old play, which 
has a long scene with conversations between the Swin- 
stead monks upon the appearance of John in their 
midst, and an outlining of the Avay in which the poison 
was administered. 

A quotation from this scene, being the soliloquy of 
Manet the monk, in Swinstead Abbey, may not be un- 
interesting, especially as Shakespeare in the play does 
not touch the details in his reference to the event. 

Monk. Is this the king that never loved a friar ? 
Is this the man that doth contemn the Pope ? 
Is this the man that robbed the holy Church ? 
And yet will fly into a Friory. 
Is this the king that aims at Abbey's lands ? 
Is this the man whom all the world abhors ? 
And yet will fly into a Priorie. 
Accursed be Swinsted Abbey, Abbot, Friars, 
Monks, nuns, and Clarks, and all that dwells therein, 
If wicked John escapes alive away. 

He free my country and the church from foes 
And merit heaven by killing of a king. 

Shakespeare's method at times of crystallizing whole 
scenes into a single line or two, yet vividly in those 
few words presenting a picture spread over pages by 
his inferiors, is seen in the Avay he treats this incident : 

P. Henry. How fares your majesty ? 

K. John. Poisoned, ill fare, dead, forsook, cast oflf.' 

' Act V. , Scene 7. 



ANTI-PAPAL SPIRIT OF THE AGE. 49 

And yet the poisoning is pronounced apocryphal, and 
modern historians attribute John's death to either the 
fatigue of his dangerous passage of the river, aided by 
his anxiety and crushing weight of trouble ; or to a 
surfeit of peaches and new cider ; or to a distemper 
which had preyed upon his system for some months. 
But whatever its cause, the death of John was the sal- 
vation of England, as his miserable life had been, in 
the strange chemistry of Providence, her redemption 
from a Continental province to the state of a proud and 
compact nation. 

We may not close our study of King John's 
*' troublesome raigne " without noting again how the 
old play, to a greater extent than Shakespeare's, was 
infected with the violence of the anti-papal spirit of 
those days in which it was w^ritten, and how Shake- 
speare softened this down so that Roman and Anglican 
could witness its presentation side by side. One quo- 
tation may be made of a play, written it must be re- 
membered in that transition period while the memory 
of Henry VIII. was still fresh in the minds of middle- 
aged men. The passage evidently had in mind Henry 
and the circumstances of his revolt from the Roman 
obedience. The words are put by the author of the 
'* Troublesome Raigne " in the mouth of John while 
writhing under the sentence of interdict and excom- 
munication. 

John. (Solus.) Then, John, there is no way to keep thy crown 
But finely to dissemble with the Pope. 
That hand that gave the wound must give the salve 
To cure the hurt, else quite incurable. 
Thy sinnes are far too great to be the man 
4 



50 aHARACTER OF FALGONBRIDOE. 

To abolish Pope and poperie from the Kealme, 

But in thy seat, if I may gesse at all, 

A king shall raigne that shall suppress them all. 

This seems, even though it was written as having been 
uttered three hundred years before the English Eef- 
ormation, to be accurate as representing the spirit of 
those very times of Shakespeare. 

It was such waves of feeling gathering for many 
generations that, swelling to high tide in the sixteenth 
century, swept the Bishop of Rome from his long- 
assumed authority over the autonomous Church of 
England. 

But if the religious feeling of the England of Shake- 
speare's day finds expression in this play, the patriot- 
ism of the times is no less interpreted, not in mere 
word pictures, although the play ends with a fine 
apostrophe Avhicli is quoted at the conclusion of this 
chapter, but in its delineation of English manhood. 

The character of Philip Falconbridge, the natural 
son of Eichard the Lion Heart, is looked upon as an 
ideal of the poet's brain, with no other foundation 
than the fact of the existence of such a person who 
was not at all conspicuous in history. But Falcon- 
bridge seems to have been more than an ideal. He 
did really exist, not as a faithful servant of King John, 
as in the play, but in hundreds and thousands of loyal 
steadfast men, citizens ox England. Not nobles, nor 
barons, nor degraded serfs, but men. The forgotten 
men of most historic records. The men who are 
ploughing and sowing ; buying and selling ; marrying 
and bringing up sons and daughters like themselves ; 
paying the taxes of despotism and suffering the incon- 



^yOMEN OF THE PLAY. 51 

veuiences of oppression, while doing their duty in that 
state of life to which it had pleased God to call them. 
Men who faced the daily problems of life, and as God 
gave them strength sought to deal with them, not 
complaining over much. Even giving their bodies to 
be set up as targets at the king's will, because he was 
the king, and they were loyal to him as sons of the 
soil. 

Philip Falconbridge is an interesting study. It 
would appear that Shakespeare intended to have him 
represent the sturdy heart of English manhood, which, 
while often misused, humiliated, and beaten back, 
finally conquered and rose to its proper place in the 
making of later and nobler England, as the commons ; 
not the legislature of that name narrowly, but the 
makers of legislatures. So while Philip Falconbridge 
was an imaginary character he was not an imaginary 
force. 

Another set of characters in this play are of more 
than passing interest, the women. Of Blanche we have 
already spoken ; how her youth and innocence were 
played with as common pawns to advance the interests 
of worldly-wise bishops and designing kings. But of 
Constance, the mother of Arthur, and Elinor, the 
mother of John, and hence grandmother of Arthur, 
something remains to be said. In the actual history 
of the times they did not play so important a part as 
is attributed to them by the dramatist. But that they 
exerted some influence upon the politics of their day 
cannot be doubted. Women have, noticeably, always 
managed to influence for good or evil the affairs of 
kingdoms and the actions of kings. 



52 CONSTANCE AND ELINOR. "^ 

The picture Shakespeare draws of Constance is 
touching in the extreme. Her grief over the death of 
Arthur is one of the finest outbursts of the poet's 
genius. But we must read it apart from the other 
scenes in which the fair lady appears, or our sym- 
pathies will receive a shock. There are passages-at- 
arms between Constance and Elinor which exceed, in 
not always refined Billingsgate, the choicest scoldings 
of literature. Space will not serve to quote. Their 
relations as rivals w^ere such that Holinshed, quoted 
by Malone, and requoted by Courtenay in his " Com- 
mentaries " on the play, must give us an idea of the 
trouble that lay at the root of their contentions. 

" Surely Queen Elinor, the king's mother, was sore 
against her nephew Arthur, rather moved thereto by 
envy conceived against his mother, than upon any just 
occasion given on behalf of the child. For that she 
saw, if he were king, how that his mother, Constance, 
would look to bear most rule within the realm of 
England till her son should come of lawful age to 
govern of himself. So hard it is to bring women to 
agree in one mind, their natures commonly being so 
contrary, their words so variable, and their deeds so 
indiscreet." 

Throughout the plays we see, how^ever, that the 
women were not without influence in the adjustment 
or maladjustment of the affairs of state. A fact which 
is true to history then as now, and another evidence 
that Shakespeare paid more attention to the under- 
lying philosophy than the outward accuracy of his 
chronicle plays. 

The moral of the play, if we may so regard it, is the 



MORAL OF THE PLAY. 53 

exaltation of England's place among the nations of the 
world and the inspiring of England's sons to attain 
this bright ideal. To illustrate this, and as one more 
comparison of the paraphrasing of the words of others 
to his own use — paraphrasing which under his genius 
became original — compare the last lines of the 
*' Troublesome Raigne " and the parallel passage from 
Shakespeare's play. 

Falconbridge. (After the crowning of Prince Henry.) 
Tims England's peace begins in Henry es raigne, 
And bloody wars are closed with haj^pv league. 
Let England live but true within itself, 
And all the world can never wrong her state. 

If England's Peers and people join in one 

Nor Pope, nor France, nor Spain can do them wrong. 

Kow Shakespeare : 

This England never did, nor never shall. 

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 

But when it first did help to wound itself. 

Now these her princes are come home again, 

Come the three corners of the world in arms, 

And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue, 

If England to itself do rest but true.^ 

lAct v., Scene 7. 



EICHARD II. 

There is no eYidence that Shakespeare had access 
to, or, at all events, nsed another play based on the 
events of this reign. 

The history is found in Holinshed's " Chronicle " 
and other less known publications. 

" Eichard II." is mentioned by Meres, and its date 
is 1597. 



CHEONOLOGY BETWEEN KING JOHN AND 
RICHARD II. 

1210-72. Henry III. (son of King John) reigned. First reg- 
ular English Parliament summoned, January 20, 1265. 

1272-1307. Edward I. (son of Henry III.) reigned. Conquest 
of Wales, 1272. Final organization of the English Parlia- 
ment, 1295. Conquest of Scotland, 1296. 

1307-27. Edward II. (son of Edward I.) reigned. Battle of 
Bannockburn, defeat of the English, January 24, 1314. Semi- 
conquest of Ireland achieved, 1316. Truce with Scotland, 
1323. Edward deposed by Parliament, 1327, and murdered 
in the following September at Berkeley Castle. 

1327-77. Edward, III. (son of Edward II.) reigned. Inde- 
pendence of Scotland recognized, 1328. 

1327-77. Edward claims crown of France, 1337-38. Battle 
of Cressy, 1346. Calais captured and truce with France, 
1347. Renewal of French war, 1355. Battle of Poitiers, 
1356. Treaty of Bretiguy, May, 1360. "By this treaty the 
English King waived his claims in the crown of France and 
on the Duchy of Normandy. But, on the other hand, his 
Duchy of Aquitaine was not only restored, but freed from its 
obligation as a French fief and granted in full sovereignty 
with Ponthiar, as well as with Guisnes and his new conquest 
of Calais." 

1376. Death of Edward, Prince of Whiles, the Black Prince. 



CHRONOLOGY OF RICHAED H. 

1377. Richard comes t6 the throne. The government in the 
hands of a Council, named by the lords but influenced by 
the king's uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester, Lancaster, and 
York. 

1381. Wat Tyler's rebellion. 

1386. Richard's favorite, the Duke of Suffolk, impeached, and 
a regency dominated by Gloucester appointed. 

1388-89. After various trials of strength between the king and 
the oj)position, Richard shakes off all control and reigns in- 
dependently. 

1397. For alleged conspiracies against the throne Gloucester 
is at first imprisoned, and then dies in Calais under suspicious 
circumstances, the king being implicated by common report. 

13^8. Shakespeare's play begins. Quarrel of the Dukes of 
Hereford (Henry Bolingbroke, son of the Duke of Lancaster) 
and Norfolk. Richard prevents a duel and banishes both 
contestants. 

1399. Richard interferes with the marriage between Boling- 
broke and the daughter of the Duke de Berri. Lancaster dies, 
and Richard, contrary to his promise to Henry Bolingbroke, 
seizes the paternal estates for the crown. Richard goes to 
Ireland to complete its conquest. Bolingbroke lands at Ra- 
venspurg (July 4th), and both nobles and people flock to him. 
Richard returns to find himself deserted by his Uncle York, 
whom he had left as regent, and is betrayed into the hands 
of Bolingbroke. Richard is impeached at Westminster, re- 
signs his crown, and is deposed. Henry Bolingbroke claims 
the throne, and is elected by the Parliament under the name 
of Henrv IV. 



CHAPTEE III. 

RICHARD II. — THE LANCASTRIAN USURPATION. 

Connecting historical links between John and Richard II. — The fatal 
passion for foreign conquest. — The play covers last two jears of 
Richard's reign. — Story of the previous years. — Richard in leading- 
strings. — Breaking away from control, the king rules unwisely. — 
Conspiracies and plots. — Death of Gloucester. — Richard grows more 
and more despotic. — Three centres of action. — (I.) The banishment of 
Bolingbroke. — (II.) Bolingbroke's return and revolt. — (III.) Deposi- 
tion of Richard and usurpation of Bolingbroke as Henry IV. — Arraign- 
ment of Bolingbroke and Mowbray on countercharges of treason. — The 
quarrel referred to the lists at Coventry. — Richard interferes. — Un- 
equal sentence of the combatants. — Bolingbroke in exile — His father 
dies, and the king seizes his estates. — Richard goes to the Irish war^. 
— Bolingbroke (now Duke of Lancaster) returns and lands at Ravens- 
purg. — His declared intention merely to recover his estates. — The 
latter his ground of appeals to other nobles to join him. — Richard, 
hearing of the return, delays acting, but finally lands on the Welsh 
coast. — York yields to Bolingbroke's blandishment. — Richard wholly 
deserted, inveigled, and betrayed — He breaks dov.'n and goes to Lon- 
don under compulsion. — Analysis of the king's altered character. — 
The king signs his abdication. — Henry IV. — Prophecy of the Bishop 
of Carlisle. — Henry's title and the legitimate heir. — Parliament con- 
dones the usurpation. — Minor plots to restore Richard. — His death. — 
Character of Richard. — Historic setting of the play. 

There is an historical gap of about one hundred and 
eighty years between the last scene of " King John " and 
the first of "Eichardll." Mean\Yhile England had 
been working out her destiny, which destiny was largely 
influenced by what had taken place in the reign of him 
whose inglorious career is indicated by his inglorious 
sobriquet of "Lackland." There is an analogy be- 
tween the careers of dynasties and men. A youth 



58 FATE OF THE PLANTAOENETS. 

spent in weakness and folly foreshadows a manhood of 
decay and impotency. This was the history and the 
fate of the house of Plantagenet. We may not say that 
the sins of John were visited upon the head of Rich- 
ard III. But, in writing out that story which ended 
in the deserved dissolution of a dynasty that had lasted 
for more than three hundred years, the poet has set 
forth a perfect syllogism in political morals, with 
John as its premise and Eichard III. its conclusion. 

The play of " Richard II." introduces us to a state of 
affairs ^vhicli can be fully understood only by a brief 
survey of the score of years which had passed since 
the young king's accession to the throne ; and to under- 
stand this in turn, the reader of English history will 
require a rapid sketch of the interval of nearly two 
centuries, unilluminated by the genius of Shakespeare, 
between the accession of Henry III. (after the death 
of his father King John) and the month of September 
1398, in which the opening scenes of the present play 
are laid. 

Henry III. was a babe when he came to the throne. 
This always, or almost always, involves trouble. Un- 
scrupulous ministers and back-stair influence are apt 
to be rife. Henry was fated, as his father before him, 
to have the kingdom taken from him for a time and 
put in the hands of a commission. Meantime Magna 
Charta had strengthened the national life, and the first 
representative parliament was assembled. Edward I. 
succeeded Henry and by comparison reigned brill- 
iantly. Wales was conquered and made an appanage 
of the royal family, the heir apparent taking the title 
of Prince of Wales. Edward II, on the surface lost 



FROM JOHN TO RICHARD II. 59 

miicli of his father's prestige, and was deposed and 
murdered after a reign of twenty years, during which 
Ireland was conquered, to become a rankhng thorn in 
the English body politic forever, and Scotland secured 
her independence, to become in later centuries the 
strong right arm of English loyalty. Here was a yic- 
tory and a defeat, "of which it has been strangely but 
truly said, that the victory should be lamented by 
England as a national judgment, and the defeat cele- 
brated as a national festival." 

The discrowned and murdered Edward was suc- 
ceeded by his son, third of the name, whose reign has 
ever been looked upon as one of the most glorious in 
English annals. It is marred in the eyes of the modern 
philosophical patriot hj an insatiable desire for foreign 
conquest. We cannot blame the crass and immature 
statesmanship of Edward III., however, for not seeing, 
as clearly as posterity, that Continental complications, 
of whatever nature, which interfered Avith the insular 
solidarity of England were injurious, however fruitful 
of famous victories. It was a Plantagenet character- 
istic to look upon France as a province of England, 
and it was not until the last of the Plantagenets found 
a bloody end on Bosworth Field that the idea was 
actually given up. The Black Prince, v/lio would have 
succeeded his father of glorious memory, died before 
the throne vras vacant, and at the age of eleven years 
his son Bichard 11. was crowned king. 

Edward III. left as an heritage to his grandson not 
only such victories as Cressy and Poitiers, but a peo- 
ple who had risen to power in national affairs, and a 
throne with acknowledged limitations. Magna Charta 



60 SOURCES OF THE FLAY. 

had acquired character and was presently to assert it- 
self in the Wat Tyler rebellion, which, although in one 
sense a failure, was the means of striking off the shac- 
kles of English serfdom. 

It was at this period also that the English language 
began to be spoken and written as the national tongue. 
French and Latin had had their day. Chaucer had 
started the rushing fountain of English speech. Wyck- 
liffe had added the element of the Holy Bible in the 
vernacular ; and although for lack of the printing press 
literature was kept back for a few decades, the seed was 
in the soil, and its time of flower and fruitage came. 

Shakespeare's play is founded on Holinshed's " Chron- 
icle." There was- no previous dramatic work of the kind 
at hand ; or if there were, the poet preferred to fly on 
his own Aving. The historic accuracy of the drama is 
undoubted. The gravest anachronism is that of mak- 
ing Queen Isabel a woman of mature years. She was 
in reality but eleven years old, and Richards marriage 
with her (1396) and the alliance with France so secured, 
was one of the incidental reasons of popular dissatisfac- 
tion which came to a head in his deposition. Isabel is 
the only female character of any importance in the play, 
and if her age was advanced a few years, so that her 
relations with the king should add a touch of pathos 
to the story, it must be admitted, with Skottowe, that 
the effort was a failure. The scenes in Avhich Isabel 
appears are the v/eakest in the tragedy. Shakespeare's 
was yet a 'prentice hand in the delineation of female 
character, and the genius which was to rise so high in 
the portrayal of Katharine of Arragon "imped on a 
drooping an ing " with Isabella of France. 



THE KlXa IK LEADING STRINGS. 61 

The scenes grouped about the deposition of the king 
and the enthroning of Bolingbroke are reversed in or- 
der of time; and Aumerle's mother who pleads for him 
with the usurper, in the last act, had been dead some 
years. But as usual wdth the poet, his use of wide li- 
cense in such matters tended to the greater vividness 
of his dramatic pictures. 

These anachronisms are so few and trifling, and so 
practicallj' unimportant to the literal historic movement, 
that for purposes of illustration '* Bichard II." is one 
of the best of the chronicle plays. 

To sketch in brief the main thread of Richard's 
reigii up to the point where the play opens, we must in 
imagination see Bichard crowned at the age of eleven 
years. A commission of nine powerful nobles held the 
reins of power, among whom were conspicuous the 
king's uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester, Lancaster, and 
York. His coronation as the legal heir of the Black 
Prince of idolized memory, with its accompaniments of 
hotnage, fulsome praises, and gross flatteries, was calcu- 
lated to inflate his boyish ideas as to the difference be- 
tween the blood of kings and of common people. What 
else could be expected of a child who found himself, for 
no conceivable reason apparent to himself, the centre of 
adulation and a bone of contention between princes. It 
was in these scenes of his impressionable years that he 
learned the lesson of the divine right of kings, and that 

Not all the water in the rough rnde sea 

Can wash the balm from an anointed king. ^ 

The breath of worldly men cannot depose 

The deputy elected by the Lord. ' 

' Act m., Scene 2, 



62 HIS EMANCIPATION. 

So suiTonnded by scheming relations, particularly the 
older uncles, Gloucester and Lancaster ; restless 
barons beginning to feel the pressure and restriction 
of the commons on their actions ; held in tutelage be- 
yond the years of nonag-e ; alternately flattered and de- 
ceived ; Kichard one day bluntly asked his uncles if 
he were not old enough to govern for himself, and 
without more ado assumed the prerogative. Richard 
may be pardoned for throwing ojff the bands of com- 
missions and regencies at the age of twenty-two ; but 
the effects of his political infancy were to bear bitter 
fruit. His suspicions of his uncles (doubtless well 
founded) end in the exile of Lancaster for a time, and 
the death in prison of Gloucester, which death was 
laid by common report at his nephew's door. It must 
be remembered in connection with this episode that 
the Mowbray of the play was in charge of Gloucester 
when his death was reported. 

Eichard had been growing more and more des- 
potic as a natural result of his forced tutelage. The 
people, who had begun to taste the sweets of parliamen- 
tary government, w^ere rudely set aside, and by an act 
wrenched from a subservient legislature, in the year be- 
fore the play begins, all practical power was placed in 
the hands of the king and his council. ^ 

The Irish wars and his private expenses made huge 
inroads on the public purse, and finally the combined 
avarice and necessities of Eichard led him to "farm 
out " the realm. 

And, for our coffers with too great a court 
And hberal largess are grown somewhat hght, 
^ We are enforced to farm our royal realm ; 



JOHN OF GAUNT 8 LAMENT. 63 

The revenue whereof shall furnish us 
For our affairs in hand ' 

Gaunt, in his dying speech, " a prophet new inspired " 
laments : 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 
Dear for her reputation through the world, 
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it. 
Like to a tenement or pelting farm ; •^ 

and hurls at the recreant king, 

Landlord of England art thou, and not king. 

The chronicler Fabyan says (quoted by Knight), " In 
this twenty-second year of Richard, the common fame 
ran that the king had letten to farm the realm unto Sir 
"William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, and then treasurer 
of England, to Sir John Bushy, Sir John Bagot, and 
Sir Henry Green, knights." 

It is evident from this why " Bushy, Bagot here, and 
Green," are selected by Shakespeare as types of the 
favorites about Eichard's person, who, according to 
Bolingbroke's charge on their ai:>prehensibn, " misled 
a prince, a royal king." 

It is at this period that the play opens. The lords 
and nobles are disgusted with the unkingiy actions of 
their sovereign. The commons have been deprived of 
the sweets of self-government. Plots were thickening 
and conspiracies gathering strength from the twenty 
years of a reign in some respects as weak as that of 
John. 

1 Act I. , Scene 4. 2 Act II. , Scene 1. 



V 



64: THREE CENTRES OF ACTION. 

Shakespeare deals with three historic events of im- 
portance within the limits of the play, around which 
cluster and out of which grow the minor incidents. 
These are (I.) the banishment of Bolingbroke ; (II.) his 
return and rebellion, as Duke of Lancaster ; and (III.) 
the deposition and death of Richard II. 

The banishment of Bolingbroke is a natural sequence 
of the events of the reign which preceded it. The 
quarrel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray, with which 
the play opens, culminating in the lists of Coventry 
and the common exile of the participants, is one of those 
historical secrets, the explanation of which is lost in the 
mazes and intricacies which characterized the political 
life of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The 
two contestants had been leagued together formerly 
in the "treasons of these eighteen years," and both 
had guilty knowledge of conspiracies to hold the king 
in leading strings. Mowbray was, on the whole, more 
loyal to Richard than Bolingbroke, although the latter 
had been pardoned for his share in the late treasonable 
practices. It was now recalled that Mowbray was in 
charge of the Duke of Gloucester when he met his sus- 
picious death. 

The mutual recriminations of the two nobles in the 
first scene of Act I. do not throw much light upon their 
quarrel, save that Mowbray is accused of being a traitor 
on general principles, which on general principles he 
denies : 

That all the treasons for these eighteen years 

Complotted and contrived in this land 

Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring, 

That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester's death. 



MOWBBAT AND BOLINQBROKE. G5 

Mowbray, in a very eloquent plea, puts in a defence : 

And iatercliangeably limi down my gage 
Upon this overweening traitor's foot, 
To prove myself a loyal gentleman.' 

As a matter of fact there was no noble of Eicliard's 
covirt but tliat had some hand in the treasons of those 
eighteen years ; and a charge of malfeasance in office 
and misuse of public moneys is a customary move of 
political warfare not unknown to our own da^^s. 

The accusation of Gloucester's death was a more 
serious one. In reality it was an arraignment of Rich- 
ard over Mowbray's shoulders, and all the parties con- 
cerned knew it. It was well known that if Gloucester 
had suffered a violent end it must have been the in- 
spiration of Richard. Gaunt and Gloucester's widow 
voiced the common opinion when the latter appeals to 
the old Duke : 

To safeguard tliine own life 
The besfway is to venge my Gloucester's death. 
Gaunt. Heaven's is the quarrel ; for heaven's substitute 
His deputy anointed in his sight 
Hath caused his death. ^ 

It was a bold cast of Bolingbroke to hurl that ma- 
licious dart, and he won by it. The king could not 
defend Mowbray without incriminating himself. Mow- 
bray could not, from loyalty or, indeed, with any safety, 
lay the death of Gloucester upon the king. 

The trial by battle is appointed at Coventry, and at 
the moment of beginning the contest the king (with 
the advice of his council, not arbitrarily as the play 

' Act I. , Scene 1 . 2 Act I. , Scene 2. 

5 



66 RICHAIW'S INTERFERENCE. 

suggests) throws down his warder, declines to allow 
the duel to proceed, and sentences Mowbray to life 
exile, and Bolingbroke to banishment for ten, after- 
ward reduced to six years. 

This change of front was quite typical of the king. 
While it seemed to lean to the side of mercy, it was an 
exhibition of that despotic power which, even in small 
aifairs, delighted Richard. And it was a logical se- 
quence of those earlier years of his reign, during which, 
he had the semblance, Avhile deprived of the reality of 
power. Moreover, if Bolingbroke won the duel, he 
had given boastful public notice that he felt it incum- 
bent upon him to avenge his uncle's death. 

Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries, 
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, 
To me for justice and rough chastisement : 
And, by the glorious worth of my descent, 
This arm shall do it, or this life be s^Dent. ^ 

Richard had proved the loyalty of Mowbray, and 
their common guilty knowledge of Gloucester's death 
acted as a further bond between them. It would be as 
easy to recall Mowbray, after a short time, as to banish 
him for life, and the king felt that Mowbray's loyalty 
would stand the test of the temporary discomfort of 
exile for his sovereign's sake. On the other hand, 
Bolingbroke's popularity with the Commons, Avhom 
Richard had offended, his royal blood and powerful 
political as well as family connections, all conspired to 
make of him a foe to be feared. This appears to have 
been the secret of the change of the king's mind in 

1 Act I., Scene 1. 



FATE OF MOWBRAY. 67 

regard to the duration of Lis cousin's exile. It seemed 
a master-stroke of policy. As though to intimate to 
the haughty noble that his punishment were merely 
nominal after all. Of Mowbray we hear but once 
again. Sacrificed (although perhaps but temporarily) 
to the selfish interest of the master he had loyally 
served, and who was soon to lose the power, even had 
he the intention, to restore his friend, the gallant 
"Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray," took service 
under the banner of the Crusaders, and when Boling- 
broke, as Henry IV., would have recalled his ancient 
enemy, it was too late. Norfolk was dead. 

Many a time liath banislied Norfolk fonglit 
For Jesus Christ, in glorious Christian field, 
Streaming the ensign of the Christian Cross 
Against black pagans, Turks and Saracens, 
And toiled with works of war, retired himself 
To Italy : and there at Venice, gave 
His body to that pleasant country's earth 
And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ, 
Under whose colors he had fought so long.' 

But the king's compromise failed. He had put off 
the evil day of reckoning, not delivered himself from 
the necessity of it. It was nearer even than any of 
the prominent actors in it dreamed. Kichard's public 
reason, why the sentence of banishment on both con- 
testants was preferable to allowing them to settle their 
quarrel by the duello, reads strangely with our later 
knowledge : 

For that our kingdom's earth should not be soiled 
With that dear blood which it hath fostered, 

1 Act IV., Scene 1. 



68 GERMS OF CIVIL WAR. 

And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect 

Of civil wounds plowed up with neighbor's swords.' 

He would avoid civil wars, but the banishment of the 
J two nobles was the opening skirmish of the severest 
and bloodiest fratricidal strife in England's history, the 
"Wars of the Koses." Bolingbroke's absence em- 
boldened the king to confiscate the estates of his house 
upon the death of "John of Gaunt, time-honored Lan- 
caster." This act gave the ambitious noble a pretext 
to return from exile, and to gather a force under his 
banner for the restoration of his lands and seignories. 
' Rebellion and the deposition of Richard followed; 
Bolingbroke challenged the throne and secured it. 
" Plume-plucked Richard " died by force or otherwise, 
in prison. The Bishop of Carlisle needed no more 
than ordinary inspiration to prophesy : 

The blood of English shall manure the ground. 

O ! If you rear this house against this house 

It will the woefullest division jDrove 

That ever fell upon this cursed earth, 

Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, 

Lest child, child's children, cry against you, woe.^ 

Old Gaunt's speech also, already quoted, made to 
Richard from his dying bed, not only analyzes the 
state of the realm but, seer-like, predicts the course af- 
fairs must take unless, 

V^ Though Eichard my life's counsel would not hear, 

My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.^ 

1 Act I. , Scene 3. 2 Act IV., Scene 1. 

3 Act II., Scene 1. 



BOLINGBROKE'S WRATH. 69 

Some of the learned critics sagely remark that there 
is no historic authority for this speech. Doubtless not 
for the literalists. Even dukes when about to die did 
not send for chroniclers in order that their final mes- 
sage to the world might be set forth in due form. It 
is sufficient for historical purposes, and adapted to 
dramatic exigencies, that the situation of affairs be 
summed up so accurately as in the words of this dying 
man, than whom no living soul was better versed in the 
trend of national politics and the connection with them 
of Richard's weakness and rapacity. We have antici- 
pated the story here to illustrate Richard's fatal facil- 
ity of deafness and blindness, when to hear and to see 
were easier. The Irish wars attract him. ti 

Now, for our Irish wars. 
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns, 

And for these great affairs do ask some charge, 
Toward our assistance, we do seize to us 
The plate, coin, revenues and movables, 
Whereof our Uncle Gaunt did stand possessed.' 

The scene shifts and with the same personages a new 
turn is given to this drama of real life. Bolingbroke 
hears of the escheatment of his estates and the death 
of his father. His heart is hot against Richard on an- 
other count beside that of his banishment, for the 
king's influence had prevented his marriage with a 
daughter of the Duke de Berri (Mary de Bohun) while 
he was high in favor at the French court. Bolingbroke 
hears of the continued discontent of the Commons and 

'Act II., Scene 1. 



70 BOLTNOBROKE'S RETURN. 

the sullen attitude of the great nobles. He hesitates 
no longer. Having, with all his faults, the genius of 
catching the flood tide in the afi:airs of men, possessed 
of inordinate ambition, inspired by hatred, and nerved 
by a courage that never swerved in " plucking the 
flower of safety from the nettle danger," he landed in 
England with a handful of attendants on July 4, 1399. 

This brings to our notice the second point of historic 
action illustrated by the poet in this play — the return 
and rebellion of Bolingbroke. 

In taking his departure for the Irish wars Eichard 
had made his surviving uncle, Duke of York, regent 
during the period of his absence. Ordinarily it was a 
safe and crafty arrangement, for York was the most 
timid, irresolute, and unambitious of men. No danger 
could be suspected from any ulterior designs of his, 
upon either the aftections of the people or the throne 
of the realm. But these very qualities made him as 
paper-pulp in the hands of the scheming and arbitrary 
Bolingbroke. Upon hearing of the latter's landing 
and the growth of an army under his banner, York be- 
comes as supine and helpless as a child. 

If I know 
How or which way to order these affairs 
Thus thrust disorderly into my hands, 
Never beUeve me. Both are my kinsmen : 
The one is my sovereign, whom both my oath 
And duty bids defend ; the other again 
Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wronged. 

All is uneven. 
And everything is left at six and seven.' 

1 Act II., Scene 2. 



PRETEXT OF THE REBELLION. 71 

Forces gather about Bolingbroke, among whom es- 
pecially welcomed were the powerful Percys : North- 
umberland, his brother Worcester, and gallant young 
Harry HotsjDur, three thorns afterward to sting the 
hand within whose grasp they had placed the sceptre 
of power. 

There are tw^o possible views of Bolingbroke's re- 
bellion against Eichard. It is within the limits of 
probability that before his banishment he was in cor- 
respondence with the nobles who afterward joined 
him, and that the conspiracy, nipped in the bud by the 
king's interference in the personal quarrel at Coventry, 
blossomed anew, with the pretext of the exile's return 
to reclaim his unjustly seized estates. Northumber- 
land's speech, when he hears of the landing of Boling- 
broke, implies that rebellion against the crown and 
not the restoration of a brother noble's lands, was his 
leading motive. 

If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke, 
Imp out our drooping country's broken wing, 
Redeem from broken pawn the blemished crown, 
Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre's gilt, 
And make high majesty look like itself, 
Away with me in post to Eavenspurg. ' 

In Mowbray's counter accusation there may be an im- 
plication of some such plot : 

No, Bolingbroke. If ever I were traitor, 
My name be blotted from the book of life. 
And I from heaven banished as from hence. 
But what thou art, heaven, thou, and I do know : 
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.'- 

1 Act II. , Scene 1 . 2 Act I. , Scene 3. 



72 THE llEOENT'S WEAKNESS. 

On the other hand Shakespeare is historically correct 
in making Bolingbroke's protest, first to his allies, and 
afterward to the king's own face, that he was im- 
pelled to return in seeming rebellion only to win back 
his hereditary estates, and that the nobles and Com- 
mons forced him, for the sake of England's better gov- 
ernment and honor, to assume the crown. 

When poor old York endeavors feebly to withstand 
the rush of Bolingbroke's popularity, and petulantly 
cries, " Tut, tut ! grace me no grace, nor uncle me no 
uncle, I am no traitor's uncle," he is very quickly 
silenced by his nephew's special pleading, backed by 
the powerful Northumberland's indorsement, y*dio says : 

The noble duke hath sworn his coming is 
But for his own ; and for the right of that 
We all have strongly sworn to give him aid, 
And let him ne'er see joy that breaks that oath.' 

York's attitude is really pitiable. He is a type of 
character quite common in stirring times, who slide 
along safely, and even gracefully, over the surface of 
events, until deep currents disturb the ordinary flow 
of life. In the main such a one perceives the right 
thing to do, and if he had his preference would choose 
to do it. But he will not commit himself irretrievably 
to the right, if it be in a minority. He will warn 
others, but go no further by example. Here York cries : 

Well, well, I see the issue of these arms : 
I cannot mend it, I must needs confess, 
Because my power is weak and all ill left : 
But if I could, by him that gave me life, 

1 Act II., Scene 3. 



RICHARD'S DALLIANCE. IIS 

I would attach you all and make you stoop 
Uuto the sovereign mercy of the king : 
But since I cannot, be it known to you 
I do remain as neuter.^ 

Bolingbroke was very well satisfied to have no sharper 
opposition from the regent and his army than "neu- 
trality," especially as the declaration was followed by 
an invitation to become York's guest at his castle for 
the night. 

Meanw^hile Kichard was acting out the character he 
had been accreting for a score of troubled years. He 
first heard of the rebellion in Ireland. Knight '^ quotes 
the contemporary account of a Frenchman, in the suite 
of Richard, as to the w^ay in which the news was re- 
ceived. " Good Lord," he cries, turning pale with 
anger, " this man designs to deprive me of my country." 
Salisbury was despatched to Wales to raise an army, 
but for some unknown reason Richard dallied for 
nearly three ^veeks in Dublin, and when at last he 
landed on the Welsh coast the army had disappeared. 
The last scene of Act II. of the play tells the story 
vividly. The Welsh, ever a superstitious people, are 
convinced by the king's delay that he is dead, and that 
the expedition is ill-starred. Salisbury argues in vain. 
The captain says : 

' Tis thought the king is dead : we will not stay. 
The bay-trees in our country are all withered 
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven, 
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth, 
And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change. 

1 Act II., Scene 3. 2 History of England, Vol I., Chap. 33. 



74 THE WELSH ARMY MELTS AWAY. 

These signs forerun the death or fall of kings ; 
Farewell : our countrymen are gone and fled 
As well assured Richard their king is dead.' 

Eicliard, not aware of this defection, lands in the spirit 
of one assuming, without fear of contradiction, that 

The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
The deputy elected by the Lord. 
For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed 
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown 
Heaven, for his Richard, hath in heavenly pay 
A glorious angel. - 

But this high tone does not last long. He wandered 
from castle to castle without additions from either 
earthly or heavenly sources. The first news that 
greeted him was the melting away of the Weloh army 
on which he had chiefly relied. Quickly followed the 
intelligence that the common people threw up their 
hats for Henry of Lancaster. 

White -beards have armed their thin and hairless scalps 

Against thy majesty : and boys, with women's voices, 

Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints 

In stiff un wieldly arms against thy crown : 

Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows 

Of double fatal yew against thy state : 

Yea, distaff women manage rusty bills 

Against thy seat : both young and old rebel, 

And all goes worse than I have power to tell.^ 

At length the inevitable end comes. With only a 
handful of supporters — the chief men who had re- 
mained loyal to him in the hands of the rebels — York, 

» Act II., Scene 4. - Act III. , Scene 2. ^ Act III. , Scene 3. 



ALTERNATE MOODS OF THE KING. 75 

the regent, feebly remonstrating against revolt, while 
entertaining Bolingbroke at his board — the whole coun- 
try permeated with the subtly sprinkled poison that 
Henry of Lancaster was but righteously contending 
for that of which he had been unjustly deprived, and 
that his grievance was only the common grievance of 
all English subjects, — Eichard weakly, pitiably, suc- 
cumbs. But not all at once. 

There were yet sparks of the nobility of soul that 
caused him, when but a boy half grown, to ride forth 
alone and put himself at the head of a hundred thou- 
sand malcontents in Wat Tyler's ranks, as their natural 
leader who would see their wrongs righted. 

One moment he cries : 

This earth shall have a feeliug and these stones 
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. 

The next he sobs : 

Have I not reason to look i^ale and dead ? 
All souls that will be safe fly from my side ; 
For time hath set a blot upon my pride. 

Again, under spur of Aumerle : 

I had forgot myself. Am I not king ? 
Awake, thou sluggard majesty, thou sleepest ; 
Is not the king's name forty thousand names ? 

But again : 

Of comfort no man speak : 
Let's talk of graves, worms, and epitajDhs, 



\ 



76 MEETING OF THE RIVALS. 

Make dust our paper, and with raiuing eyes 
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.' 

Brought face to face with Bolingbroke at last, the 
king's temper shifts and veers in the same uncertain 
way. But although his moods thus express them- 
selves, it is not now from sudden bravery or sheer 
affright. The whole of scene third, act third, in which 
the first interview takes place, and which ends with the 
setting forth of the chief personages in company to 
London, marks a notable transition in the character of 
Richard. 

It must be remembered that, although Shakespeare 
makes no mention of the fact, Richard, in these pre- 
liminary interviews with Bolingbroke and his mes- 
sengers, was probably intending treachery as well as 
expecting it. If he had been suddenly transformed 
into an angel of humility it would have been a mirac- 
ulous event. His bringing up in undignified bondage 
to his uncles, while yet wearing the splendid pomp of 
a heaven-anointed sovereign, had seemed to confuse 
his moral sense. His reliance was not so much upon 
God as that he believed even God could not but es- 
pouse the cause of " his elected deputy." 

Shakespeare gives the substance but not the form of 
Richard's meeting with Bolingbroke. In reality he 
was betrayed by Northumberland. The latter came as 
an ambassador, apparently unattended, to Conway Cas- 
tle where the king was, and " admitted to the castle he 
proposed certain conditions to the king, which were 
willingly agreed to, as they impaired not the royal au- 

1 Act III., Scene 2. 



RICHARD BETRAYED. 77 

thority, and to the observance of these Northumber- 
land swore. It was promised that Lancaster should 
come to Flint and, having asked pardon on his knees, 
should be restored to the estates and honors of his 
family."! 

The king was on his way from Conway to Flint when 
he was made a prisoner by the treacherous Northum- 
berland's forces, and from that moment there was no 
further hope of a meeting on equal terms between the 
two foes. This episode is passed over by Shakespeare, 
for unknown reasons. The chronicles record it. It 
would surely have afforded a dramatic scene, and have 
helped to illustrate that entire change in Eichard's 
character which is manifestly the design of Shake- 
speare in these later scenes. For, from the moment he 
appears, before Bolingbroke, practically a prisoner, the 
king is no longer the Richard of the earlier portions 
of the play, and we are indebted to the dramatist, far 
more than to the chroniclers, for this vivid character 
drawing of the last days of the once arrogant and proud 
Plantagenet. 

It is not desperation, nor sorrowful bombast, nor 
the whine of despair that brings the king to his knees 
before the subject he had banished from the realm. 

Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee 
To make the base earth proud with kissing it. 

Up, cousin, up ; your heart is up I know, 
Thus high at least [touching his own head) although 
your knee be low. 

1 Knight's History of England, Vol I. , p. 584, quoted from a contem- 
porary MS. 



78 CHAUAGTER OF RICHARD. 

Cousin, I am too young to be your father, 
Though you are old enough to be my heir. 
What you will have, I'll give, and willing too; 
For do we must what force will have us do.^ 

This is not the language of mere sordid weakness 
and cowardice. It is the yielding to fate of one to 
whom the further game is not worth the candle. 

Kichard would never have won a crown by force of 
masterful assertion and his good right arm. Having 
royalty as an heritage, he held it as a right not to be 
disputed, rather than a trust to be administered. 

His weakness in defence was moral not ph3^sical. 
So long as he was surrounded by a brilliant court and 
backed by a powerful army, the crown was the most 
glorious possession in the world. But, to him, it was 
not worth " the stress and storm." Shakespeare's pa- 
thetic speech put in the king's mouth seems the justest 
estimate of his feeble yet not undignified (if the para- 
dox may be allowed) character. 

What must the king do now ? Must he submit ? 

The king shall do it : Must he be deposed? 

The king shall be contented : must he lose 

The name of king? O' God's name, let it go : 

I'll give my jewels for a set of beads, 

My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, 

My gay apparel for an almsman's gown, 

My figured goblets for a dish of wood, 

My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff, 

My subjects for a pair of carved saints. 

And my large kingdom for a little grave, 

A little, little grave, an obscure grave : 

Or I'll be buried on the king's highway, 

i Act III., Scenes. 



DETHRONEMENT OF RICHARD. 70 

Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet 
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head ; 
For on my heart they tread now whilst I live — 
And buried once, why not upon my head ? ^ 

Coleridge would have him weak and womanish 
throughout, " what he was at first he was at last, except 
so far as he yields to circumstances." It was exactly in 
this " yielding J^o circumstances " that marks the tran- 
sition and denotes the essential change in Richard. If 
he had yielded earlier he would have been a stronger 
king; that he did so eventually made him a better man. 

The third and last historic centre of action in this 
drama is the deposition and death of Eichard, and in- 
cidentally the crowning of Henry Bolingbroke as Henry 
IV. It was inevitable of course. A discrowned and 
imprisoned king seldom escapes his earthly trials save 
through " the grave, and gate of death." 

The play assumes, in entire consonance with the 
chronicles, that Richard's resignation of the cro^Ti was 
voluntary, and that he designated Bolingbroke as a fit- 
ting successor. 

Yorlc. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee 

From plume-plucked Eichard ; who with willing soul 

Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields 

To the possession of thy royal hand. 

Ascend his throne, descending now from him ; 

And long live Henry, of that name the fourth. ^ 

The poet, for no conceivable reason, dramatic or his- 
toric, that appears on the surface, places Bolingbroke's 

In God's name I'll assume the regal throne ' 
^ Act m. , Scene 3. 2 Act IV. , Scene 1. 3 Ibid. 



80 USURPATION OF LANCASTER. 

before the formal resignation of Kichard. This slight 
anachronism does not prevent the fourth act (of which 
there is but one scene) from being an admirable pict- 
ure, down to the least detail, of the dethronement of 
the king and the usurpation of Henry of Lancaster. 

For dethronement and usurpation are the proper 
designations of these acts concerning which York ut- 
ters the euphemism : 

Which tired majesty did make thee offer, 
The resignation of thy state and crown/ 

The Bishop of Carlisle, loyal to his king, protested 
against both deposition and encroachment upon the 
royal demesne. 

What subject can give sentence on his king ? 
And who sits here that is not Eichard's subject ? ^ 

There is a suggestion throughout the speech that the 
good Bishop is standing up for the divine right of 
kings, but on closer reading it will be perceived that 
his argument is based mainly on the fact that Richard 
is not being treated fairly by being deposed in his 
absence. 

Thieves are not judged but they are by to hear.^ 

The dramatic and historic unity of the play is main- 
tained by the prophecy already quoted of civil war, 
which is sure to result if Bolingbroke is crowned. 

The effort is made to commit Richard to his own 
deposition, and Northumberland addresses him : 

1 Act IV., Scene 1. ^ Ibid. ^ Ibid. 



ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT. 81 

Eeacl 
These accusations and these grievous crimes 
Committed by your person and your followers, 
Against the state and profit of this land : 
That, by confessing them, the sonls of men 
May deem that you are worthily deposed.' 

Bichard's pathetic protest might have moved even the 
cold sternness of the powerful nobles who thus played, 
cat-like, with his griefs. 

Must I do so? And must I ravel out 

My weaved-up follies ? Gentle Northumberland, 

If thy offences were upon record, 

Would it not shame thee, in so fair a troop 

To read a lecture of them ? - 

The bill of particulars referred to here, and contained 
in the impeachment of Richard before the Commons, 
had thirty-three charges, the most important of which 
were those laying the death of Gloucester at his door, 
the seizure of Bolingbroke's estates, and general accu- 
sations of despotism, unfaithfulness, and inconstancy. 
That they were untrue no one would claim. That 
they offered sufficient grounds for a forced abdication 
of the throne, in that rude age, is open to argument. 
Henry YIII. was far more guilty after a lapse of more 
than two centuries, and died in his bed, shrieking out 
with his last earthly breath a despotic command that 
was all but carried out. 

Guilty as Richard undoubtedly was, "so variable 
and dissembling in his words and writings, that no 
man living who knew his conditions could or would 

> Act IV., Scene 1. 2 ibid. 

6 



82 DEPOSITION OF RIGHAUD. 

confide in him," still he was the victim of a youth 
which had been formed for hiai by others, and chiefly 
by those who shouted Hail ! to Henry of Lancaster, as 
he ascended the throne from which he had plucked 
his cousin. And the marvellous skill of the dramatist 
in these scenes portrays the reality, under the show of 
things, in such a way that the reader knows the truth, 
and that it is not with Bolingbroke. The act (IV.) 
which tells this story concludes significantly. The 
new king announces a day for his coronation and leaves 
the stage to a handful of those whose loyalty to " un- 
kinged Richard " remained unshaken. 

Abbot. A woeful pageant have we here beheld. 
Bishop of Carlisle. The woe's to come : the children yet 
unborn 
Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn. 

Abbot. I see your brows are full of discontent, 
Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears : 
Come home with me to supper : I will lay 
A plot shall show us all a merry day. ' 

Two points of interest remain ; the death of Richard, 
and the abortive plot to rise in rebellion against his 
successor. Over the whole of the last act in which 
these events are dramatically set forth, there is 
thrown a glam.our of pity for the dethroned monarch. 
The interview between Richard and his queen does 
not rise to more than mediocrity, perhaps because it is 
both historically inaccurate and psychologically im- 
possible. The king and queen did not meet again at 
all after their parting when Richard set out for Ire- 

1 Act IV., Scene 1. 



AUMERLE'S TREASON. 83 

land, and Queen Isabel was a child. In no other point 
does the play show its early composition so certainly 
as in the poet's handling of this character. That knowl- 
edge and appreciation of womanhood which is one of 
the noblest components of his later works, is lament- 
ably deficient here. 

York's interview with his duchess, interrupted by 
sobs and weepings on both their parts, and containing 
the pathetic picture, trite but ever thrilling, of the 
double entry of Bolingbroke and Kichard to London, 
ends with the duke's pious resignation : 

But heaven hath a hand in these events, 
To whose high will we bow our calm contents ; 
To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now, 
"Whose state and honor I for aye allow. ^ 

The frantic efforts of York to impound his own son for 
treason, in order to prove his own loyalty and " calm 
content," has something revolting in it. Yet it is 
dramatically in harmony with all that precedes, to 
indicate the germs of rebellion already beginning to 
swell in the souls of Englishmen, before the usurper 
was well settled in his royal chair. And perhaps our 
lack of sympathy with York is gratified, at having 
the stalk of revolt push itself above the surface of 
" calm contents " in the unstable Duke's own family. 
Otherwise, next to the scenes in which Isabel is in- 
troduced, those concerning Aumerle's discovered trea- 
son add least to the play, whether it be viewed as 
poem or drama. 

The close student of our great poet will be interested 



Act v., Scene 3. 



1/ 



84 FATE OF RICHARD. 

in comparing the 4th and 6th scenes of the 5th Act of 
this play, with scene 3d of Act III., and scene 2d of 
Act lY. of King John. In both cases a king inspires 
his follower to murder. In both he repudiates the 
murder once accomplished. King Henry and Exton are 
cut from the same pattern as King John and Hubert. 

It is disputed by historians whether Kichard died 
by violence or at the command of Bolingbroke. It is 
certain that he did not die as shown in the play, 
where Exton is represented as striking him down 
while he is struggling with the servants who are com- 
missioned to kill him ; for some years ago Richard's 
body was exhumed and no signs of a blow upon the 
skull were discoverable. He might have been stabbed 
to the heart, or starved to death, however, and on the 
whole we may believe the latter was his fate. Boling- 
broke would not have the stain of actual blood upon 
him. He would not kill Richard outright, but would 
let him die, a more quiet and king-like way of reach- 
ing the desired end. For death was inevitable. There 
is no room on earth for a king uncrowned by force. 
He is a constant source of danger to the reigning 
monarch, a centre around which will gather those 
discontented and daring spirits to whom peace has 
no prizes, and upon whom established order has no 
claim. 

There was a story with which our Shakespeare seems 
to have been unacquainted, that Richard escaped from 
prison and lived for many years in hiding in the 
Scottish marches. If this had been so, he would un- 
doubtedly have been summoned from his obscurity by 
Northumberland, Percy, and the Scotch in the rebel- 



RICHARD'S PROPHECY. 85 

lion of Henry lY.'s reign, and willy-nilly have be- 
come a contestant for liis own throne. But there is 
no smack of truth to the story. Hichard died and 
Henry of Lancaster reigned in his stead. The am- 
bition of perhaps a lifetime was achieved, but to what 
a bitter end ! 

When we come to consider the events of Boling- 
broke's reign as treated by Shakespeare in the first 
and second parts of Henry IV., it wdll be seen that 
the sceptre even of England might be too dearly 
bought. We will discover that Bolingbroke was per- 
fectly conscious of the treachery of his course, and that 
he accepted the many sorrows of his life as a well- 
earned retribution. We will find also the nobles, who 
raised him one round on the ladder of power and 
dignity above themselves, recalling Kichard's prophecy 
to Northumberland. 

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal 

The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne 

The time shall not be many hours of age 

More than it is, e'er foul sin, gathering head 

Shall break into corruption : thou shalt think, 

Though he divide the realm and give thee half, 

It is too little, helping him to all. 

And he shall think that thou which know'st the way 

To plant unrightful kings, will know again, 

Being ne'er so little urged, another way 

To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.^ 

If all is granted concerning the alleged evils of Eich- 
ard's mismanaged government, and the parliamentary 
decree to depose him from the throne for cause is ad- 

1 Act v.. Scene 1. 



80 BIGHARD'S LEGAL SUCCESSOR. 

judged fair, still Boliiigbroke may not be relieved of 
the crime of usurpation. 

He claimed the throne in right of descent from 
Edward III., of whom it is true he was the grandson. 
But Eichard failing for whatever reason, the crown 
belonged to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, lineal 
descendant of Clarence, third son of Edward III. ; 
while John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke's father, was fourth 
son, and out of the line of succession. This Edward 
was but ten years of age. Of his claim could be 
said, as was said of the mifortunate Richard by Lang- 
land, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a 
child." 

Again, we must consider that, granting Eichard's in- 
competency, the nobles and parliament had precedent 
(in the case of King John over Arthur of Brittany) 
for preferring to place the sceptre in the strong hands 
of a man rather than in the w^eak grasp of a child. 
It was not his usurpation to the throne that disturbed 
Henry of Lancaster, usurpation though it was ; it was 
remorse for the steps he took to mount so high. 
"Heaven knows," says Henry the Fourth, with his 
very latest counsel to the son he loved : 

Heaven knows, my son, 
By what by-paths and indirect crooked ways 
I met this crown : and I myself know well 
How troublesome it sat upon my head : 
To thee it shall descend with better quiet, 
Better opinion, better confirmation. 
For all the soil of the achievement goes 
With me into the earth.' 

1 II. Henry IV., Act IV., Scene 4. 



CHARACTER OF RICHARD. 87 

It has been already noted that the play covers but a 
short two years of Richard's reign. This is in di'a- 
matic keeping with the idea hitherto thrown out, that 
the decline and fall of the House of Plantagenet is 
the theme of these eight dramas between king John 
and Henry YIII., in relation to which continued story, 
the former stands as prologue and the latter as epi- 
logue. 

It is in these last two years that the seeds of the 
final dissolution of that House are sown, in those his- 
toric events which brought about the internecine ri- 
valry of the families of York and Lancaster. This 
will be more clearly developed as the story of succeed- 
ing reigns unrolls before us on the superb canvas of 
our great poet. 

The character of Richard is the tour deforce of the 
drama. So large a space is devoted to the develop- 
ment of his personality that the play is better regarded 
as a poem than as an acting drama. As Coleridge 
says : " But in itself, and for the closet, I feel no hesi- 
tation in placing it as the first and most admirable of 
all Shakespeare's purely historical plays." 

The student will note how clearly the chief ele- 
ments in Richard's education, circumstances, and char- 
acter are indicated in the first scenes of the play : 
whereby the attention of the reader is attracted, 
and his mind prepared for all that follows. He is in 
the midst of treasons and plots and conspiracies. 
He deals with them not with a masterful hand, but 
with a sort of shifty, cunning policy, which must 
o'erreach itself in the end. We cannot agree with 
those historians who give to Richard any deep or 



88 BOLINQBROKE'8 ANXIETIES. 

large sense of the royal dignity. While patriotism 
and love of country is one of the themes of the play 
(as of all of the English histories), Richard himself 
seems to value his crown for its glitter ; his realm as a 
source of revenue ; and his anointment as the " deputy 
elected of the Lord " as a matter of course, requiring no 
stewardship on the one hand, or accounting for on the 
other. In his day of humiliation he sees more clearly 
than before, but it stirs no kingly fire, and arouses no 
princely courage. While to the last he resents the ille- 
gality of his deposition, in his heart of hearts he ac- 
cepts its moral fitness. 

There would be more to say of the character of Bol- 
ingbroke if his story ended here. Over him also 
comes a change when once the cares as well as the 
glories of kingship are upon him. In the last Act (V., 
sc. 4) we note that anxiety over his son's courses 
which shows a father's yearning love creeping from 
beneath a noble's o'erweening ambition, and his gentle 
treatment of the rebellious Aumerle is not such as 
would be naturally expected of high-mounting Boling- 
broke. By these signs of a finer realization of noblesse 
oblige, we are prepared for the wide difference between 
usurping Bolingbroke and the reigning monarch Henry 
ly., a contrast which the poet sets forth in the suc- 
ceeding play. 

As to the historic period in which the drama finds its 
setting, as already briefly noted, it was an important 
epoch of England's internal life. Richard coming to 
the throne upheld on the shield of powerful barons, 
saw not the cloud arising in the sky little larger than 
a man's hand, the growing poAver and influence of 



HISTORIC SETTING OF THE PLAY. 89 

the people. The Commons had no hand in Magna 
Charta, but they had benefited by it. In the reigns of 
Henry III. and the great Edward, mutterings of un- 
easiness and dissatisfaction began to be heard. In this 
last year of the fourteenth century the old feudal 
tyranny was beginning to give way. The revolt which 
placed Bolingbroke in Richard's seat was not of the 
nobles only, but of the Commons also. This was the 
political situation and environment, a stage of transi- 
tion, with which Richard, a product of the old feudal 
life, had to deal. 

But there was another, a religious phase, which dif- 
ferentiated Richard's England from that of his prede- 
cessors. This phase is marked by the name of Wyck- 
liffe, " the rising sun of the Reformation," and the 
spread of his doctrines. 

We cannot fail to note that, as we trace the weaken- 
ing of feudalism to the Magna Charta of King John, 
although it was gained by the feudal power, so we find 
the germs of the later Reformation in the famous inter- 
dict which the Pope laid upon the England of King 
John. Kings and popes did well in those days to join 
hands in the suppression of heretics, for heretics in re- 
ligion were the stuff of which rebels in state affairs 
were made. 

Wyckliffe died in 1384, but his Bible in the English 
tongue remained a charter of spiritual, as the Magna 
Charta was of political, freedom. Civil freedom gained 
a step, and a great one, in the deposition of Richard 
II. For in that event, while it seemed that the bad 
ambition of one man used the deep yearnings of the 
people to accomplish his own plans, in reality Boling- 



90 LITERATURE AND PRINTING. 

broke was the unconscious instrument of that power, 
greater than baron, priest, or king, the power slowly 
gathering force and courage and hope under the rude 
homespun of the yeomanry of England. 

Literature, too, was trimming her lamps and filling 
her vessels with oil. Chaucer and Gower by birth, and 
Froissart by adoption, uttered the first real notes of 
that Anglo-Saxon strain which has moulded the feel- 
ings, broadened the mind, made glad the heart, and 
strengthened the soul, of the whole human race. 

The art of printing was yet to come, but when Gut- 
tenberg drew the first proof-sheet damp from his imper- 
fect press, he drew a veil over the world's real infancy 
and darkness, and turned the face of the whole earth 
toward the promise of manhood and light ; a promise 
that has since been gloriously fulfilled, and never in so 
large a way, or by a more transcendent genius, than in 
the method and by the works of Shakespeare, poet 
and prophet, historian and seer. 



HENKY IV. 

TWO PARTS. 

The original of these plays, apart from Hall's Chron- 
icle, is the first half of an anonymous play entitled 
" The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth : Contain- 
ing the Honorable Battell of Agincourt : as it was 
plaide by the Queenes Maiesties Players." London. 
Printed by Thomas Creede, 1598, 4o. Blacldetter. 

In this original are suggestions of several scenes in 
Shakespeare's play, and the character of Falstaff is re- 
motely hinted at in the person of Sir John Oldcastle. 
It covers the historical ground of both Henry IV. and 
V. 

The date of these two parts is 1597. The play is 
mentioned by Meres and included in the First Folio. 



CHRONOLOGY OF HENRY IV. 

1399. Henry Bolingbroke begins to reign as Henry IV. The 
parliament in choosing him passed over the claims of the lin- 
eal heir, who was Edmund Mortimer, great-grandson of the 
third son of Edward III. Bolingbroke was grandson of the 
fourth son. 

1400. Revolt of Owen Glendower of Wales. Edmund Mor- 
timer (uncle of the slighted heir), sent against Glendower by 
Henry, is taken captive and marries his captor's daughter, 

1402. Battle of Holmedon Hill (September). Defeat of 
Douglas and the Scotch by the English under the Percys. 

1403. Revolt of the Percys against Henry. They form an al- 
liance with the Welsh under Glendower, and the Scotch un- 
der Douglas. 

Battle of Shrewsbury (July). Allies defeated and Harry 
Percy slain. 

1405. Renewed revolt of Northumberland (father of Harry Per- 
cy), Archbishop Scrope, and the Earl of Nottingham. A 
truce made for the King with the insurgent leaders is base- 
ly broken by the King's representatives, and among others 
Archbishop Scrope is executed. 

1407. Northumberland makes a final eflfort against Henry, is 
defeated and slain. 

1410. Final conquest of the Welsh, and end of the domestic 
broils which afflicted the whole reign of Henry IV. 

1413. Death of Henry. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

HENRY IV. — THE PASSING OF FEUDALISM. 

Sources of this play. — Trials of the usurping King. — Discontent of the 
great Nobles. — Welsh revolt. — Scotch troubles. — Mortimer's alliance 
with Glendower. — The menace of Henry's conscience. — Three princi- 
pal historical events in the two parts. — (I) The defeat of the rebel- 
lion at Shrewsbury. —(II. ) The broken compact on the King's part. — 
(III.) Henry's death and accession of "Prince Hal." — Events leading 
up to the first revolt. — Victory of Holmedon and Percy's triumph 
over the Scotch. — Hotspur's refusal to give up his prisoners. — His 
plea for the ransom of Mortimer. — Rebellion invoked. — Three uncon- 
genial factors of the conspiracy. — Its inherent weakness. — Northum- 
berland " Crafty sick." — Glendower's delay. — Shrewsbury. — Defeat of 
the rebellion and death of "Hotspur." — Contrasted characters of 
Monmouth and "Hotspur." — The huddling of events for dramatic 
effect. — Northumberland's policy. — Plans of the rebels after Shrews- 
bury. — An honorable treaty proposed by the King, agreed to by the 
Nobles, dishonorably broken. — The poet's historic faithfulness at 
large, but inaccuracy as to details. — Henry's last illness. — Incident of 
the crown. — Henry's character. — Statesmanship. — Remorse. — Death- 
blow to feudalism. — The crusades and the Jerusalem chamber. — Prince 
Hal upon the throne. — Agreeable disappointment of the people. — Re- 
jection of his former mode of life. — His true character. — Falstaff, a 
travesty of chivalry. 

When, in the last scene of Eichard II., Bolingbroke 
declares his intention of making a pilgrimage : — 

I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land 

To wash this blood off from my guilty hand,' 

the poet is doubtless true to the momentary attitude of 
the usurper's mind. Guilty or not of the blood of the 

1 Richard XL, Act V., Scene 6. 



94 EARLY CAMPAIGNS, 

deposed monarch, Henry IV. was guilty enough of 
tortuous and devious devices in mounting the throne 
of England. It Avas in harmony with the strange 
moral sense of his age, that he should have deter- 
mined to efface his guilt in a campaign against the en- 
emies of the Cross. But the opportunity did not oc- 
cur. " High-mounting Bolingbroke " became a melan- 
choly king. His reign Avas troubled and feverish. 
Consummate statesman that he was, he could not 
enjoy the fruits of his own victories, although by the 
strong hand he succeeded in passing them on to his 
son. 

Shakespeare in a single stroke tells the story of 
Bolingbroke between the death of Richard, and news 
of the battle of Holmedon, with which the first part of 
Henry lY. opens : 

" So shaken as we are, so wan with care." ' 

Two years have elapsed since the ambitious subject 
forced his sovereign from the throne, and seized a 
crown. They were trying and harassing years, 
marked by campaigns in Scotland and in Wales, as 

well as 

*' in the intestine shock 
And furious close of civil butchery." ^ 

The Scotch were chronic disturbers of the border 
peace, and the Welsh had been strong adherents of 
Richard's cause, Glendower having been a squire of 
his household. The nobles were discontented for a 
variety of reasons. Henry was obliged to inaugurate 

» Henry IV., Part I., Act I., Scene 1. 2 ibid. 



GERMS OF REBELLION. 95 

some reforms which bore hardly on the aristocracy. 
The confederate leaders who had paved the way for 
one of their own number to tlie dizzy height of royalty, 
were especially aggrieved at his evident determination 
to reign independently, and even to cm-b the influence 
and crop the comb of feudalism. 

Many circumstances conspired to trouble the peace 
of the House of Lancaster, but at their head and front 
was this civil discontent. 

Shakespeare paints the death throes of feudalism 
with a master hand. The shadow of its passing en- 
shrouded the whole reign of the first Lancastrian. 

It was plainly inevitable in the nature of things, that 
the prophecy of the Bishop of Carlisle should be lite- 
rally fulfilled : 

And if you crown him let me prophesy 

The blood of English shall manure the ground 

And future ages groan for this foul act.' 

Richard's own warning to Northumberland : 

Thou ladder wherewithal 
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne ! ■ 

must inevitably be established. The peers, of wdiom 
Northumberland was chief, felt themselves strong 
enough, if good reason should appear, to pull down 
Avhom they had set up. Li those turbulent times good 
reasons were always within the reach of mailed hands. 
It was inevitable also that the plain people of Eng- 
land should stand by the new king for the same rea- 
sons that had caused them to espouse his cause. He 

1 Richard II., Act IV., Scene 1. - Richard II., Act V., Scene 1. 



96 PASSING OF FEUDALISM. 

was as nearly a democrat as the first part of the fif- 
teenth century could produce. If not m heart, he was 
one in policy. The people, slow to change, were stead- 
fast in their likes and dislikes, and they formed the 
real strength of the Lancastrian dynasty established 
by Henry IV., deepened and secured by Henry V. 
The break with his chief nobles thus threw Jlenry 
back upon the Commons and made way for the break- 
ing down of the feudal system, which is the chief his- 
toric event writ large and illustrated in the two parts 
of this play. We see the process of disintegration in 
its first and most important stages. The real death- 
blow was struck when Henry defeated the combined 
force of the great nobihty at Shrewsbury. After this 
the feudal system dragged on an impotent existence 
until, when the last of the Plantagenet kings died like 
a wild boar on Bosworth field, and Henry, first of the 
Tudors, came to the throne, there were but twenty -nine 
lay nobles to take their places in his first Parliament. 

It will be noticed later on, how this passing of feu- 
dalism harmonizes with the introduction of Falstafi', 
and how the whole comedy movement of the play of 
which he is the centre, illustrates, not broad farce, but 
scathing satire. 

Leaving the comedy for further consideration in its 
appropriate place, we notice that there are again three 
centres of historical importance about which the poet 
weaves the illustrations of his genius. 

These are in order : I. The battle of Shrewsbury. 
II. The broken compact. III. Death of Henry IV., 
and accession of Prince Hal. 

I. The events that led up to the battle of Shrews- 



CLAIM OF THE MORTIMERS. 97 

bury, in which the royal forces were victorious, and 
the power of the great nobles well-nigh crushed, are 
vividly illustrated in the beginning of the play. It 
opens with news of the defeat and capture of Mortimer 
by the Welsh rebels under the " irregular and wild 
Glendower," and a great victory in the north over the 
Scotch by the king's men under the powerful North- 
umberland and his son, Harry HotsjDur. In regard to 
the former event Shakespeare commits the anachron- 
ism of identifying Mortimer with his nephew, the Earl 
of March, who Avas the legitimate heir to the throne 
after Eichard, by his descent from an older branch of 
the royal family than could be claimed for Henry lY.^ 
The heirship to the throne would lie in young Mor- 
timer, and Shakespeare is thus justified in treating one 
of the family name as an opponent whose influence 
the king had to fear, especially in alliance with the 
Northumberland party, owing to the fact that Hot- 
spur's wife was the uncle Mortimer's sister. It was 
even reported that Kichard had declared the Earl 
of March next heir to the throne. The usurper may 
have been led by these dangers to the security of his 
own claims, to see too readily in Mortimer's defeat 
and marriage with Glendower's daughter a treasonable 
plot. For Hotspur, rising in A\Tath at Henry's refusal 

1 The claim of Mortimer was through Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third 
son of Edward III. The claim of Bolingbroke, Henry IV., was through his 
father, John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. Mortimer was the legal 
heir after Richard, who died without children. Misled by his chronicle 
authority, Shakespeare confuses the uncle and nephew Mortimer (vide 
Act II., Scene 3), where Hotspur's wife calls the Mortimer of the play 
her brother, as he was, and Act III., Scene 1, where Mortimer calls Hot- 
spur's wife aunt, which of course she was not. See table of kings in Ap- 
pendix. 

7 



M 



98 PME8TIGE OF THE PERCYS, 

to ransom Mortimer, having heard the report of Kich- 
ard's declaration, cries ont : 

Nay, tben I cannot blame his cousiu-kiug 

That wished him on the barren mountain starve.^ 

But that Henry had some excuse for looking askance 
upon his possible rival to the throne apart from per- 
sonal considerations, is seen in the fact that Mortimer 
settled back so comfortably into his captivity as to 
marry his captor's daughter. 

The battle of Holmedon, on the other hand, gave 
Northumberland and his family great prestige, and ex- 
alted still more that independence among the feudal 
lords, in which lay the sharpest thorn of Henry's crown. 
The play well illustrates this. Flushed with these vic- 
tories, the old Duke, his brother Worcester, and his son 
Hotspur, hold themselves haughtily enough in the 
king's presence when he demands the prisoners taken 
in battle, Avhich Hotspur declined with lame excuses, 
but finally consented to yield, on condition that Mor- 
timer, his brother-in-law, be ransomed from the Welsh. 
Henry's refusal to ransom one whom he chooses to es- 
teem a traitor, widens the breach with his once devoted 
ally, and here we have all the conditions for rebellion. 

It is necessary to glance forward over the whole 
play to extract the reasons, as set forth in their dra- 
matic order, which were deemed sufficient for the re- 
bellion of the great lords, so soon after placing Henry 
on the throne. 

The personal animus of the Percys is on the surface, 
and probably influenced the course of events to a con- 

^ Part I , Act I. , Scene 3. 



THE KING'S REFORMS. 99 

siderable extent. Feudal pride was touched by the en- 
actions of Henry's first Parliament, which sought, as 
has been already noted, to curb the power of the great 
vassals of the crown. 

Cries Hotspur indignantly, retailing the favors his 
father had done Henry, when he was but 

A poor nnmindecl ontlaw sneaking home, 

Aud now forsooth takes on him to reform 
Some certain edicts and some straight decrees 
That lay too heavy on the commonwealth, 
Cries out upon abuses : seems to weep 
Over his country's wrongs : — ^ 

These petulant sarcasms of Hotspur were levelled at 
acts of the king "which tended," as Knight says, "to 
lead the people to think that the reign of justice had 
come back." The innovations were chiefly on the side 
of parliament and people. Among others were those 
narrowing the scope of treasonable offences, and giving 
parliament authority to declare them. They forbade 
the star-chamber process of governing by packed com- 
mittees instead of in open assembly. Notably, they 
" tried to restrain the quarrels of the great nobles, by 
forbidding any person except the king to give liveries 
to his retainers." This was the crucial point. It 
tended to build up a king's party, and to disintegrate 
the vassalage by which the feudal barons were kings 
and laws unto themselves. 

It is probable, also, that Shakespeare is historically 
correct in attributing some of the discontent to a feel- 

1 Part I., Act IV., Scene 3. 



ly 



100 THE BROKEN OATH. 

iiig on tlie part of tlie nobility that they had been 
tricked into seating Bolingbroke upon the throne. 
" You swore," says Worcester, 

And you did swear the oath at Doncaster, 
That you did nothing purpose 'gainst the state, 
Nor claim no further than your new fall'n right, 
The seat of Gaunt, Dukedom of Lancaster. 

Whereby we stand opposed by such means, 
As you yourself have forged against yourself. 
By unkind usage, dangerous countenance, 
And violation of all faith and troth, 
Sworn to us in your younger euter2:)rise. ^ 

All that Henry has to offer are fair words and gra- 
cious promises. But the logic of the situation was 
terribly against him. AVlien, later on, the king con- 
fides in Warwick the prophecy of Kichard (already 
quoted), Warwick, in the endeavor to soothe his fears 
by removing the warning from the field of prophecy to 
that of clever guess-work, says, with keen philosophic 
insight that could scarcely, how^ever, have been reas- 



There is a history in all men's lives. 

Figuring the nature of the times deceased : 

The which observed, a man may j^rophesy, 

With a near aim, of the main chance of things 

As yet not come to life, which in their seeds 

And weak beginnings lie intreasured. 

Such things become the hatch and brood of time ; 

And by the necessary form of this 

King Eichard might create a perfect guess 

1 Parti., Act v., Scene 1. 



WEAKNESS OF THE REBELS. 101 

That great Northumberland, then false to him, 
Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness, 
"Which should not find a ground to root upon, 
Unless on you.^ 

In other words, as Henry's crown was the gift of dis- 
content on the part of the nobles, the discontent of the 
nobles might place it somewhere else. So the rebel-, 
lion was invoked, and the tactics of Bolingbroke turned 
against Henry IV. But notwithstanding the griev- 
ances of the nobles, the justice of their charges against 
the king, and the added strength of Welsh and Scotch 
alliances, their cause was weak, and the seed of its 
disastrous failure sprouted long before Shrewsbury 
battle-field. Northumberland and his immediate 
friends could assemble armies of their vassals, but the 
people as a whole were for the king. It Avill be re- 
membered that he coui'ted them successfully at the 
time of his banishment, and he had never lost their 
favor. They saw in this new rebellion, not resistance 
to tyranny and weakness and oppression, but the envy 
and jealousy of an aristocracy that blew hot or cold ac- 
cording to its own prosperity. If it had been right and 
necessary to depose Richard and seat Henry, it was 
treason and criminal to mido that work. They re- 
membered how the appeals of Richard had been con- 
temptuously flaimted by the Northumberland faction, 
and were not to be deceived now by such demagogic 
appeals as that of York's 

With the blood 
Of fair King Eichard, scraped from Pomfret stones. '^ 

' Part II., Act III, Scene 1. " Part 11. , Act L, Scene 1. 



102 PARTIES TO THE REBELLION. 

Nor could the warrior-like Archbishop shift the respon- 
sibility of a second revolt upon the shoulders of the 
people, as Avhen he attributed to the Commons the 
very attitude of the malcontent nobles. 

The commonwealth is sick of their own choice, 
Their over greedy love has surfeited. 

O thou fond many ! With what loud applause 
Did'st thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke, 
Before he was, what thou wouldst have him be ? 

O, thoughts of men accurst ! 
Past and to come seems best : things present, worst.' 

Another source of weakness was the heterogeneous 
nature of the alliance against the king. The English 
faction headed by Northumberland, but inspired and 
animated by his son, brave Harry Percy, was the chief 
factor, with whom were associated Owen Glendower 
on the part of Wales, and the Earl of Douglas on the 
part of Scotland. Percy and Douglas had but re- 
cently spent " a sad and bloody hoiu^" together at 
Holmedon, in which the "ever valiant and approved 
Scot " had met with severe defeat. Such wounds arc 
not soon healed. Glendower was a romantic half -bar- 
barian, although he had been " trained up in the Eng- 
lish court." As the educated savage frequently falls 
back into barbaric ways, in spite of the polishing of 
grammar and rhetoric, so it is to be feared that Glen- 
dower was but a veneered courtier, after all. He Avas 
the natural product of the hard life amid Welsh fast- 
nesses ; the superstitions of a people whose ancestors 

> Part II., Act I., Scenes. 



OLENDOWER. 103 

had perhaps been the pupils of the Druid priesthood ; 
and an implicit belief that he held so important a place 
in the creative scheme that at his nativity, not only 



but 



The goats ran from the mountains and the herds 
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields. 

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes 

Of burning cressets : 

The frame and huge foundation of the earth 
Shak'd like a coward.' 

Glendower was a poet, and a chieftain of men who 
were equally at home with the harjD and chant, with 
the mixing of magic potions, with clever devices in the 
torture of prisoners, and in the wild irregular sallies 
and retreats which made up their idea of warfare. 
Glendower was a gentleman also, as will be observed 
in his intercourse with the brutal wit of Hotspur, and 
his tender thoughtfuhiess and care for women. But 
he was not a soldier nor a diplomat. He could and 
did defend his mountain caverns for many years, but 
he could not direct or command armies. 

For a time the rebellion throve apace. The English 
party were buoyed up by hopes of cutting the royal 
crest; the Scotch by desire for revenge; the Welsh, 
with the idea that they were not as common men, and 
could not be defeated. Mortimer, the husband of Glen- 
dower's daughter, and the brother of Hotspur's wife, 
was the movable pawn of all the combinations, and it 
is not improbable that, had Henry IV. been defeated, 
the Earl of March mio'ht have ascended the throne. 

' Parti., Act in., Scene 1. 



J 



104 THE KING'S TROUBLES. 

The conspirators throve apace and even parcelled out 
the land they expected to win by their sword-blades. 
Of course, over this partition they quarrelled. One of 
the cleverest, and best worth reading scenes of the 
First Part of Henry lY, is Sc. 1 of Act III., in wdiich 
Hotspur, Glendower, and Mortimer are set forth as not 
only counting their chickens before they are hatched, 
but parcelling out the mother hen and her nest. 

While his malcontent subjects are thus occupied, 
Henry is not altogether sure of the outcome of these 
affairs. In the armed hosts of his enemies, to whom 

These promises are fair, the parties sure, 
And our induction full of prosperous hope,^ 

he saw the hand of a melancholy fate. The king's 
name was a tower of strength, but the king's soul was 
faint within him. He w^as not a mere demagogue this 
man who played sometimes the demagogue's part. 

When we have allowed for the sympathy which 
Shakespeare conjures up about the last scenes of the 
life of Eichard 11. , and are out from under the wizard's 
spell cast over the failing and pathetic fortunes of the 
deposed king, we can see that Bolingbroke has some 
noble characteristics which intensify as he looks with 
sad eyes from the gilded throne he sought with such 
a vain and fond ambition. As the troubles thickened 
about him, no one was quicker than himself to see their 
origin. He had planted the seed, and shock of battle 
at Shrewsbury was the harvest. Henry's greatest 
weakness lay in his guilty conscience. If not the 
blood, at least the unhappy fate, of Kichard lay heavy 

1 Part I., Act IIL, Scene 1. 



PRINCE HAL. 105 

on his soul. In his last words to the son who was to 
lift England to a higher pitch of glory and renown 
than she had ever known, the careworn, remorseful 
king confesses : 

Heaven knows, my son, 
By wliat by-paths and indirect, crooked ways, 
I met this crown, and I myself know well 
How troublesome it sat upon my head. 

How came I by the crown, O Heaven forgive ! 
And grant it may with thee in true peace live. ' 

Henry's conscience was thus a perpetual menace to 
the success of his efforts. Along with this was the 
shadow flung upon the futui-e fortunes of his house by 
the careless life of Prince Hal, his oldest son and heir.^ 
The historic truth of this domestic trouble between 
the king and his son is undoubted. 

That the wild Prince was not quite the gentlemanly 
scoundrel of Shakespeare's portrait, is quite true, but 
that there was quite enough in his conduct to warrant 
the gravest fears on Henry's part, we may be assured. 
The king likened his heir to 

The skipping king w'ho ambled up and down 
With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,^ 

1 Part n., Act IV., Scene 4. 

■^ There is a touching line in one of the king's speeches, that conveys with 
vividness an image of the lonely heart he bore beneath the majesty of 
royalty. 

For thou hast lost thy princely privilege 

With vile participations : not an eye 

But is a' weary of the common sight 

Save raine, lohich hath desired to see thee more. 

—Part I., Act III., Scene 2. 
3 Part I., Act III, Scene 1. 



106 THE BATTLE OF SHRFAVSBURY. 

And until the need appeared the king had cause for 
fear. But Hal was at Shrewsbury, and before that 
had assured his father's heart. 

Prince H. This, in the name of God I promise here, 
^ The which if he be pleased, I shall jjerform. 
I do beseech your majesty may salve 
The long grown wounds of my intemperance : 
If not, the end of life cancels all bands : 
And I will die a hundred thousand deaths 
E'er break the smallest parcel of this vow. 

K'mg H. A hundred thousand rebels die in this 

Thou shalt have charge, and sovereign trust in this.' 

And now the battle of Shrewsbury is fought. Hot- 
spur leads the malcontent nobles, and Henry IV., with 
his sons and faithful peers, after a vain attempt at con- 
ciliation, defends the crown. Hotspur is defeated and 
slain— not as in the play at the hands of Hal, for 
dramatic proprieties are not always as artistically ob- 
served in battle as on paper. The power of the 
great nobles received a shock from which it never en- 
tirely recovered. The grandson of Bolingbroke met it, 
or rather was dominated by it, in the person of War- 
wick the King Maker. But in the case of Warwick the 
feudal power was largely personal and not of a class. 
Warwick was sui generis. 

Feudalism as a system in England never lifted its 
head to more than hiss defiantly after Henry IV.; its 
blows were feeble and its sting drawn. 

But in addition to that slow development of the 
English people of which Shrewsbury was a logical 
link, there were some natural reasons for the defeat of 

1 Parti, Act, TIL, Scone 3. 



CAUSES OF THE DEFEAT. 107 

the rebellion which Shakespeare indicates with historic 
fidelity and poetic charm. Hotspur and the Douglas 
engaged the king's forces before the Welsh under 
Glendower, and the army under Northumberland, could 
join them. Some have attributed this to Hotspur's 
impatience and headlong zeal to fight wherever he saw 
an enemy, without looking to the consequences. This 
was partly the case, and Glendower's failure to arrive 
in time was another element of disaster. But this 
was unavoidable, owing to the sui-prising speed with 
which King Henry and Prince Hal united their forces 
and forced a battle. The king's army had been orig- 
inally levied to aid Northumberland against the Scotch. 
Hal had been makingv^a campaign against Wales. The 
news of the open revolt caused the two national armies 
to speedily join forces, and Shrewsbury was thus al- 
most an accident, as xlgincoui't was in the next reign. 

Northumberland, whose name more than his vassals 
was the tower of the rebels' strength, was " crafty 
sick." He marched but slowly southward after his 
impetuous son, sending messages of his inability to 
proceed faster. If there were but this single cam- 
paign by which to judge the elder Percy, there might 
be said much in extenuation of his failure to appear at 
Shrewsbuiy. But unfortunately for his reputation, his 
whole career was marked by the same sort of loud pro- 
fession and little performance. He accomplished most 
in helping to seat Bolingbroke. But the times were 
^\dtli him then ; before and after Shrewsbury they 
were against him. His name was a great power in 
that he was practically king of northern England 
through the working of the feudal system. In his 



108 NORTHUMBERLAND' S VACILLATION. 

name the revolt was pkiimed, under his fostering boast 
and promises it took shape. Doubtless he hoped, by 
virtue of his former success, to draw the English no- 
bility about his standard, and place Henry back as 
naked of influence and power, as when first he landed, 
a returned outlaw, at Ravenspurg. He Avas only par- 
tially successful in this attempt, not having taken into 
account the growth of a king's party, loyal first of all to 
the throne, not with a loyalty primarily subservient to 
the will of the feudal chiefs. 

Hotspur realized how fatal this vacillation of his 
father's was : 

Sick now ? droop now ? this sickness dotli infect 
The vei'^ life blood of our enterprise, 
'Tis catching hither even to our camp.' 

His endeavor to take courage from the fact that North- 
umbei'land's army, not being on hand, would be a good 
refuge in case of defeat, is cautiously overthrown by 
his uncle Worcester : 

r 
But yet, I would your father had been here. 

It will be thought 

By some that know not why he is away 
That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike 
Of our proceedings, kept the Earl from hence. ^ 

Hotspur tries to comfort himself in vain. The battle 
was fought and lost, and Northumberland hearing the 
news, dispersed his forces and retired to his castle at 
Warkworth. Henry did not force his submission too 
far, and for a time the revolted nobles and their dough- 

1 Part I., Act IV. , Scene 1. 2 ibid. 



PRINCE HAL AND HOTSPUR. 109 

ty chief lay quiet. With this battle the first part of 
Henry IV. concludes, and before discussing the desul- 
tory warfare of the next period we may profitably con- 
sider one or two of the characters already engaged, 
especially the contrasted types of Prince Hal and 
Harry Percy, called Hotspur. 

It is too early yet to dwell upon the wild Prince 
Hal, save in those points wherein his father and others 
were prone to compare him with Hotspur, and usually 
to the heir apparent's disfavor. Shakespeare invaria- 
bly links together the five dramatic epochs of his great 
national epic, from Richard II. to Richard III., by 
causing the titular hero to share our interest with his 
successor. In this way the figure of Bolingbroke casts 
a shadow forward from Richard II., Prince Hal from 
Henry IV., and Richard Gloster from Henry VI. It 
is as if to remind kings that in the evolution of affairs 
they must pass, while their kingdoms remain. This is 
one of the great and noble lessons which the poet-his- 
torian sought to teach. England was greater than- any 
personage who might for the time rule or misrule from 
her throne. The royal policy of this or that sovereign 
might seem at any stage of national progress to be the 
one policy. But underneath the ripples of change, the 
surface commotions of man's passions and greed, the 
calm tide of nationalism rose and fell, obeying higher 
laws than the edicts of kings or parliaments. 

From Canute downward, this tide has been controlled 
for men and not by men. 

The delineation of the young Prince Hal in the first 
part of this play is thus not only a following out of 
the poetic and dramatic habit of Shakespeare, but is 



110 HOTSPUR, 

a logical necessity of the historical situation. The 
Prince is as important a figure on the stage where his 
father plays the chief part, as was his father in Eichard 
II. 's time. We must keep our summing up of his char- 
acter for the next chapter, where he appears in the full 
glory of his noble manhood, but a few words are neces- 
sary here as to the comparison usually instituted be- 
tween him and Harry Hotspur. Shakespeare is re- 
sponsible for these comparisons, since he leaves the 
inference to be drawn that they were of about equal 
age. Cries Henry IV., in the first part of this play : 

O, that it could be proved 
That some night tripping fairy had exchanged 
In cradle clothes, our children where they lay, 
And called mine Percy — his Plantagenet.^ 

Now, Harry Hotspur was contemporary with Boling- 
broke himself, and old enough to be Prince Hal's 
father. This is ignored by the poet, but the drama 
gains by the poetic license. We have the king and 
his powerful noble, Northumberland, opposed to each 
other in the persons of their respective sons, who are 
drawn as types of the young manhood of those days. 
The one, a gay young gallant ; fond of taverns and 
low company ; careless of dignities ; apparently care- 
less of honor. The other a warrior pure and sim- 
ple, trained in camps instead of courts, despising the 
amusements and life of his rival, whom he at first 
scorns as : 

*' The nimble-footed, mad cap, Prince of Wales," 
1 Part I., Act L, Scene 1. 



PRINCE HAL. Ill 

but whom he learns to respect for his deeds of valor 
when : 

Harry to Harry shall — hot horse to horse 

Meet, and ne'er part, till one drop down a corse.' 

For the Prince of "Wales, even in the play, is not the 
careless pleasure - seeker he seems on the surface. 
Presently we will discuss him more at length, but as 
contrasted with Hotspur he shows not unfavorabl3\ 
The latter thinks scorn of his rival on idle rej)ort. 
Hal uses a nobler measure wherewith to gauge his 
father s foe. Addressing Worcester, the Percy's uncle, 

he says : 

Tell your nephew, 
The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world 
In praise of Henry Percy. 
I do not think a braver gentleman 
More active valiant, or more valiant young. 
More daring or more bold, is now alive, 
To grace this latter age with noble deeds. 

Hal confesses that : 

For my part, I may speak it to my shame, 
I have a truant been to chivalry.'^ 

But even here a woman's judgment would decide for 
the wild boy, rather than for the steady, cold-natured 
man, as we must judge Hotspur to be in his domestic 
relations, however merry, ardent, and impulsive as a 
soldier. In the interviews given between Hotspur 
and his wife, the Lady Percy chides him for his ab- 
sence of mind, his carelessness of her feelings, his 
utter absorption in affairs with which she is unac- 

I Part I., Act IV., Scene 1. 2 Part I.. Act V., Scene 1 . 



112 HOTSPUR AND HIS WIFE. 

quainted. The soldier in him speaks first to his 
servants, ordering them to saddle his horse, and as 
she continues her tender, anxious questioning, finally 
responds : 

Away, 
Away you trifler. Love ? I love tliee not. 
I care not for thee, Kate : this is no world 
To play with mammets and to tilt with lips. 
We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns. 
And pass them current too. God's me, my horse. 
What say'st thou, Kate ? what would'st thou have with 
me? 

Lady. Do you not love me ? do you not indeed ? 

Well, do not then, for since you love me not, 
I will not love myself. Do you not love me ? 
Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no. 

Hot, Come, wilt thou see me ride ? 

And when I am on horseback I will swear 
I love thee infinitely. But hark you, Kate : 
I must not have you henceforth question me 
Whether I go, nor reason whereabout. 
Whether I must I must ; and to conclude, 
This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate. 
I know you wise, but yet no further wise 
Than Harry Percy's wife. Constant you are 
But yet a woman : And for secrecy 
No lady closer : For I will believe 
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know. 
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate. 

Not an inch further.^ 

Hotspur is a good deal idealized. He has fine and 
generous emotions. He is of heroic mould. His sar- 
casm is tremendous, as in the scene where he recounts 

1 Part I., Act II., Scenes. 






QLENDOWER, 113 

the visit of the fop to the battle-field of Holmedon, 
demanding prisoners. In anger he is magnificent, as 
in his outbreak at Henry IV. who refused to ransom 
Mortimer. In brutal jesting he i^ facile princeps, as in 
his interviews with Glendower, who deserved courtesy 
from a soldier and comrade-in-arms, not the sneer- 
ing mockery and jibing to which his ally treated 
him. To sum up. Hotspur is a magnificent animal. 
He is not a leader among animals even. He is a sol- 
dier, not a captain. His heady temper brought about 
the defeat at Shrewsbury. He was a perfect type of 
the titled bravado. He fought valiantly, and died on 
the field of battle honorably, but not all the glamour 
of poetry thrown over him by the power of genius, can 
make him an ideal man. 

Of Glendower we have already treated in a few 
strokes briefly indicating his character. Born in the 
caves of Wales ; educated in the courts of kings ; re- 
signing his easy and luxurious life in London for the 
manher and harder career of chieftain among his own 
race ; he carried on a long warfare after the battle of 
Shrewsbury and died among his beloved hills, the 
idol of his rough retainers. He believed in all the 
superstitions of his times ; saw visions and dreamed 
dreams ; was often hunted from shelter to shelter ; 
lay on barren mountains by night, and lifted his chant 
of defiance by day. A hard life; yet an easier one 
than that of Henry Bolingbroke vainly wooing sleep 
on his silken couch, with the uneasy head upon which 
lay a golden crown. 

The second point of history marked by these two 
parts of Henry IV. is that alreadv noted as the Broken 
8 



114 THE COMPACT MADE. 

Compact. Although it occupies some space in the 
second part of Shakespeare's play, it needs here, for 
purposes of the story, to be barely mentioned. The 
poet huddles together his events for dramatic effect. 
The purpose seen in the two parts of the play is the 
Passing of Feudalism, and with the battle of Shrewsbury 
the first and most decisive blow at the system is struck. 

The events that follow it, until the final and com- 
plete victory over the rebellious nobles, in the breaking 
of Northumberland and Bardolph's power, were as fol- 
lows : Shrewsbury's date is 1403. Shakespeare con- 
tinues his story as though the nobles were entrapped 
by the broken compact at once. But it was after 
a turbulent two years, in 1405, that Prince John, of 
Lancaster, brother of the Prince of Wales, together 
Avitli some of his leading captains, made a treaty with 
Worcester on the part of the Northumberland party 
which the poet touches on as follows : 

AVestmorland, who has conducted the King's side 
and presented to John of Lancaster the articles of 
complaint for which the nobles asked redress, says : 

Pleaseth vonr grace, to answer then directly 

How far forth yon do like their articles ? 
P. John. I like them all, and do allow them well, 

And swear here by the honor of my blood, 

My father's pnrposes have been mistook ; 

And some about him have too lavishly 

Wrested his meaning and authority. 

My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redressed. 

Upon my life they shall. 
Arch. I take your princely word for these redresses. 
P. John. I give it to you and w^ill maintain my word.' 
' Part II. , Act IV. , Scene 2. 



NORTHUMBERLAND'S RE3I0RSE. - 115 

So the compact was made; but tlie moment the no- 
bles' army was disbanded, the leaders were arrested 
for high treason ; the pledges annnlled, and those who 
had relied upon the princely word were executed as 
traitors. 

But not yet Northumberland. A curious contrast 
may be drawn between him and the wavering Duke 
of York, in Eichard's reign. After the death of his 
son, the elder Percy had withdrawn from active life. 
The new revolts had his sanction, but again at criti- 
cal moments he failed to come to the front. That he 
realized his own baseness the poet finely indicates. 
When his wife would restrain him from action he 
cries : 

Alas, sweet wife, my honor is at pawn 

And but mj going, nothing could redeem it. 

Hotspur's widow bitterly reminds him : 

The time was, father, when you broke your word, 
When you were more endeared to it than now. 

Never, oh never, do his ghost the wrong 
To hold your honor more precise and nice 
With others, than with him.' 

Northumberland's response is indicative of the re- 
morse that must have filled his breast when he re- 
flected, that but for his " crafty sickness," Hotspur 
might be alive, and the Earl of March upon the 
throne : 

Beshrew your heart, 
Fair daughter. You do draw my spirits from me 

' Part II., Act II., Scene 2. 



116 END OF THE REBELLION. 

With new lamenting ancient oversights. 
But I must go and meet with danger there, 
Or it will seek me in another place, 
And find me worse j)rovided.' 

This proved to be true. He dawdled with fate and was 
overwhelmed at last. He did not join the nobles who 
were tricked by the broken compact, and for the time 
escaped, but afterwards was up in arms with some of 
his friends, comrades-in-arms, chiefly Lord Bardolph, 
and was overthrown in the battle near Tadcaster in 
1407, dying on the field. 

In the play news of this is brought to the king up- 
on the heels of that of the execution of the nobles with 
whom the truce was broken, although two years had 
elapsed : — 

Harcourt. From enemies heaven keep your majesty, 
And when they stand against you may they fall 
As those that I have come to tell you of. 
The Earl of Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph 
"With a great power of English and of Scots 
Are by the sherif of Yorkshire overthrown.^ 

The poet links this happy news of the final suppres- 
sion of rebellion with the last hours of the king, al- 
though six years elapsed before his death in 1413. 
The last half of the last scene of Act lY. is a perfect 
picture of these closing years of the king's reign, al- 
though it dramatically comprises but a few hours be- 
fore his death. In this part of the play, we have to do 
with the third historic event of our analysis — Henry's 
death and the accession of Prince Hal. 

1 Part II. , Act II. , Scene 2. ^ Part II. , Act IV. , Scene 4. 



JLLIiESS OF THE KING. 117 

The king feels that his houi' has come and desires 
to be led into his chamber to die. 

History recounts that after the rebellions were 
ciaished, the king desired to make his oft-intended 
journey as a Crusader to- the Holy Land, as a sort of 
compensation for the sins of his royal policy. At the 
shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Ab- 
bey, when he w^ent to take his vows, he was taken 
iU and conveyed to an apartment near at hand called 
the Jerusalem chamber. A reference to this will be 
made presently. The king speaks upon recovering 
from his swoon : 

I pray you take me up and bear me hence 
Into some other chamber, softly, there. ^ 

He asks for the crown to be placed upon his pillow 
near at hand, as though to lay to heart the vanity of 
that for which he had entered such torturous and devi- 
ous ways. The Prince of Wales entering, finds his 
father asleep and alone, and fascinated by the appear- 
ance of the golden bauble, apostrophizes it : 

O, polished perturbation, golden care ! ^ 

Then follows that much misunderstood scene where, 
as he soliloquizes, the prince lifts the crown from the 
pillow and puts it on his own head. A noise occurring 
he quickly leaves the room. His father awakes, and 
being told that only the Prince had been with him 
while he slept, cries out bitterly : 

The prince hath ta'en it hence, go seek him out. 
Is he so hasty that h > doth suppose 

1 Part II., Act IV., Scene 4. 2 ibid. 



118 PRINCE HAL AND THE CROWN. 

My sleep, my death ? 

Find him, my lord of Warwick, chide him hither.^ 

Now, it lias been too superficially argued that Prince 
Henry was so eager to secure the crown that he could 
not Avait until he had assui'ance of his father's death ; 
so indeed the king argued : 

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought 
I stay too long by thee, I weary thee. 
Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair ?"^ 

But read the scene carefully. Note how careful a psy- 
cliologist the poet is. The emotions that stir the 
Prince, contemplating the wasted face of his dying 
sire, and the gleaming sign of royalty close to the 
head it had uneasily adorned, are natiu^al to the finest 
shade of thought. He has no vulgar lust for what it 
symbolizes : 

Sleep with it now, 
Yet not so sound, and half so deeply sw^eet 
As he whose brow^ with homely biggin bound, 
Snores out the watch of night. 

He thinks his father dead : 

This sleep is sound indeed, this is a sleep 
That from this golden rigol hath divorced 
So many English kings.^ 

He knows, too, how much more than Bichard, his 
father valued the royalty for which tlie crown was sign 
and seal. He knew the plottings and contrivings that 
would ensue to challenge his own right to it. Surely 

1 Part II., Act IV., Scene 4. 2 ibid. 3 Ibid. 



THE KINO'S LAST WOMBS. 119 

he was no hasty banble-loYuig roisterer, but his own 
father's sou, who, as it were, with mechanical thought- 
fulness, putting the crown on his head, says : 

Lo, here it sets 
Which heaven shall guard. And put the world's whole 

strength 
Into one giant arm, it shall not force 
This lineal honor from me.' 

These musings are entirely in the vein of his father's 
last charges to him, when once reassured that the son 
is not vulgarly anxious to put on the " polished per- 
turbation." 

Henry's final words to the heir apparent throw 
light upon his life, and usurpation of the crowu. In 
the hot zeal of youth, spurred on by acknowledged 
wrongs, touched also by an ambition for which the 
times were as responsible as his own temperament, 
Henry had reached for the chiefest thing in the world 
for a strong and masterful Englishman of that day. 

He had some grounds of right, the strongest of 
which was least acknowledged by his age, but after all 
the most powerful, namely, the will of the common 
people. It was in lack of this factor, that Northum- 
berland and those with him failed to snatch the crown 
from the head of him whom they believed themselves 
to have made. Literally, too, in those days successful 
force made a legal title. Bolingbroke ascended the 
throne an actual usurper : he died a legitimate king ; 
as he says : 

For what in me was purchased 
Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort.'^ 

1 Part II., Act IV., Scene 4. 2 ibid. 



120 THE KINO'S REMORSE. 

And yet lie knows too well the power of the old feudal 
nobility which he had fatally scotched, and with the 
breadth of statesmanship and grasp of policy, that 
always characterized his public career, laid out the 
best course for his son to pursue, in order to prevent 
or discourage the rebellion, which had embittered so 
large a part of his own reign. 

Yet though thou standest more sure than I could do 

Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green, 

And all my friends, whom thou must make thy friends, 

Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out : 

By whose fell working I was first advanced, 

And by whose power, I well might lodge a fear 

To be again displaced. Which to avoid 

I cut them off ; and had a purpose now 

To lead out many to tlio Holy Land 

Lest rest, and lying still, might make them look 

Too near unto my state. Therefore my Harry 

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds 

With foreign quarrels. ' 

How thoroughly the prince entered into this mind of 
his father's, how admirably he appreciated its wisdom 
and statesmanship, and how successfully he carried 
out its suggestion, the next reign will give us ample 
illustration. 

That Henry cherished remorse for his course tow^ard 
Eichard is clearly evident throughout this play. Ee- 
morse, it must be noted, however, not for the act, but 
for the method of usurpation. His confessions of the 
inmost secrets of his soul to the Prince of Wales, 
have no word of regret for the seizure of the crown. 

1 Part II., Act IV., Scene 4- 



THE CRUSADES. 121 

As times went there was no room for regret. But 
for the hard cruelty to his kinsman Richard, and for 
the violent death of that discrowned monarch, for 
which he was morally if not legally responsible, re- 
morse and regret manifest themselves plainly. 

One last reference to Henry's career, already briefly 
alluded to, is to be noted in the lines : 

K. Henry. Doth any name particularly belong 

Unto the lodging where I first did swoon ? 

War. 'Tis called Jerusalem, my noble lord. 

K. Henry. Laud be to heaven ! Even there my life must end. 
It hath been prophesied to me many years 
I should not die but in Jerusalem, 
"Which, vainly, I supposed the Holy Land. 
But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie 
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.^ 

We remember that the crusades had been a bright 
ideal always before Henry Bolingbroke. AVith such a 
pilgrimage he proposed to wash the stains of usur- 
pation from his guilty hands, and after his conquest 
of the revolts, the crusades again occurred to him as a 
useful means of employing the activity of the barons, 
who might otherwise annoy him with further rebellions 
at home. The crusades of the fourteenth century, and 
thereabouts, were an escape-valve for all sorts of 
humours. Kings took the cross to win distinction 
against the Turk ; nobles to gain added laurels for 
their pennons ; soldiers to push their fortunes ; bank- 
rupts to fill their purses ; even beggars di^ove a good- 
lier trade with the palmer's staff. 

After the first freshness of the holy wars wore off, 

1 Part II., Act IV., Scene 4. 



122 DEATH OF HENRT. 

the chief object of their beginnings was lost sight of. 
The sepulchre of the world's Redeemer was forgotten, 
or made the pawn of worldly knights and bishops. 
All sorts of quarrels were given the dignity of crusades 
and the privileges of crusaders were awarded to cut- 
throat swashbucklers of noble or common name. 

That Henry was really stirred to intended service 
under the Cross, w^e know from the fact that in the 
last years of the Greek Empire, when it was hemmed 
in by the Mohammedan power, its Emperor Manuel 
visited England to beseech aid for a Christian empire 
against the enemies of the Cross. He was received 
and feasted by Henry, who had but just ascended 
the throne, and under this inspiration the Lancastrian 
assumed the Cross, although he put off the actual 
campaign until better times. 

Gibbon, in his " Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire," dismisses the event as of no importance, say- 
ing that " if the English monarch assumed the Cross, 
it was only to appease his people, and perhaps his 
conscience, by the merit or semblance of this pious 
intention." ' 

Gibbon is not infallible authority on details of the 
religious motives, and we may give Henry the benefit 
of the doubt, it being certain that the chroniclers 
credited him with the intention declared in the be- 
ginning, and repeated at the end, of Shakespeare's 
play, that, had the times permitted he would have 
fought against Turk and Saracen in the Holy Land. 
So passed from life one of the strong men who have 
held the sceptre of England. 

' Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V., Chap. 66, p. 300. 



DECLINE OF FEUDALISM. 123 

Whatever his faults of personal ambition, he saw 
the evil that laj cuiied about the root of England's 
noblest development — the feudal system — and struck 
it such a deadly blow as finally destroyed it. The 
people first in his reign grew to look upon their 
king as their natural leader, rather than upon their 
feudal lords. It was a great step in advance, as 
transforming England from an aggregation of small 
camps each clustered about the pennon of some 
noted baron, into a powerful host under a common 
commander, to whom was owed sujDreme homage. 
One great blot upon this reign is unnoted in the 
play. Henry IV. was the first English king to put 
a subject to death for his religious opinions. His 
father had protected Wyckliffe and the incipient re- 
formers. The son was first of Enghshmen to light 
the torch of religious persecution. 

From a contemplation of the decline of feudalism 
under Henry, we turn to consider one important 
element in these two plays concerning which, in an 
historical study, we might seem to have little to say. 

I have abstained from touching upon the comedy 
of the drama for two reasons : First, save in one par- 
ticular, it has nothing to do Avith Englisli history ; 
second, it deserves a chapter entirely devoted to it, 
as the richest vein of Shakespeare's humour. In one 
particular, however, Falstaff and his ragged crew have 
a very vital connection with the phase of English 
history marked by the passing of feudalism. What 
Shakespeare always intended to accomplish by the 
introduction of specific characters, and the grouping 
of them, we may not be sure. What he did ac- 



124 FALSTAFF A TYPE OF FSEUDO- CHIVALRY. 

complish lie that runs may read. There are many 
theories for the introduction of the comedy of Henry 
IV. centering about that richest and most unctuous 
of rogues, Jack Falstaff. 

With these, except two, the student need not be 
troubled. 

First, the dramatic materials for two plays were very 
slender, and as in the foundation play, Falstaff and his 
friends are used for what is vulgarly called "padding," 
to extend the plays to the regulation length, while at 
the same time offering the necessary dramatic contrast 
of comedy to the blood and brutality of the tragedy — 
so Shakespeare used them in the two parts of Henry 
IV. Second, which is equally obvious, although not 
so generally received : namely, that Falstaff, Pistol, 
Bardolph, and all their horde of petty followers Avith 
loud braggadocio and easily pricked coAvardice, are set 
forth as a travesty upon the highborn but pseud o- chiv- 
alry, then on its last legs, and destined soon to pass 
away entirely. Chivalry had lived its noblest long be- 
fore. The thing that masqueraded under its name is 
roughly typified in Falstaff with his shrewd knavery, 
his animal appetite, his gross trading on the name and 
title of gentleman ; above all, his self -admitted knowl- 
edge that he was in certain important ways a humbug. 
Hear him, for example, soliloquize on honor. ^ But he 
is not the arrant coward and time server he would 
have us believe. He speaks here very much in the 
spirit of Falconbridge, quoted in the chapter on King 
John, when he determines to make the "vile com- 
modity " his god. In these words we may read a 

1 Part 11. , Act v., Scene 1. 



PRINCE HAL'S REAL CHARACTER, 125 

commentary on the boasted chivalry of the fourteenth 
centm-y. It was a painted simulacrum of the fair 
original.^ 

Observe too the attitude of Prince Hal toward these 
"lewd fellows of the baser sort," with whom he found 
his lot cast for a while. The careful reader of these 
plays will readily note that while the wild Prince was 
often in Eastcheap Tavern, he was never of it. He 
is banished by his own restlessness from the solemn 
ceremonies of his father's court. He has no part nor 
lot with his eminently proper and respectable brothers. 
He seeks in dissipation, which it will be noted is 
never more than reckless and indifferent, never vile, 
the change such natures amidst such surroundings 
have ever sought ; more's the pity. But he looks on 
the antics of his pot-room companions with a heavy 
heart and forced smile, valuing them, and through 
them the shams they represent in higher quarters, at 
their true worth. 

In proof of this attitude of the Prince the whole of 
Act V. might be quoted. 

Great are the misgivings with which his accession 
to the throne is greeted. The poet cleverly adds to 

1 While Shakespeare was thixs occupied in satirizing the English chivalry 
of this period, Cervantes was putting forth his immortal travesty of middle- 
age knight-errantry in the adventures of Don Quixote. And Francia Sac- 
chetti, the Italian, quoted by Dr. Burckhardt in the Renaissance in Italy, 
wrote toward the end of the fourteenth century, " Every one saw how all 
the work people, down to the bakers, how all the woolcarder.s, usurers, 
money-changers, and blackguards of all descriptions, became knights. 
. . How art thou sunken, unhappy dignity ! Of all the long list of 

knightly duties, what single ones do these knights of ours discharge ? I 
v/ish to speak of these things, that the reader may see that knighthood 
is dead." 



126 APPREHENSIONS AT COURT. 

this appreliension by picturing the puffed-up joy of 
Falstatf, as he contemplates the elevation of his tavern 
companion to a throne : 

What, is the okl king dead? . . . Away, Bardolph : 
saddle my horse : Master Kobert Shallow, choose what office 
thou wilt in the land, it is thine. Pistol, I will double charge 
thee with dignities. ... I know the young king is sick for 
me. Let me take any man's horse : the laws of England are at 
my commandment. Happy are they which have been my 
friends, and woe unto my Lord Chief Justice.' 

This same Lord Chief Justice, so the tradition runs, 
had committed the young Prince for some fault, and 
had been assaulted by him. Certainly Falstaff and his 
cronies were joyous in the hope that their enemy, the 
law of the land, impersonated in its chief administrator, 
would suffer by the changing of kings. 

'•Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also," is the 
comment of Poins. 

Meanwhile at court there are long faces and heavy 
sighs. Doubtless for his own purposes, Shakespeare 
has painted in the dark shadows of the young Prince's 
character with a free hand, and there is warrant in all 
the chronicles for a certain degree of wildness and 
profligacy. The old play hints at this, and Shake- 
speare enlarges upon it for two reasons : first, to lay in 
a background for the artistic working out of a finer 
character for his chief hero— chief of all his heroes — 
and second, to give a more delicate shading to his com- 
edy scenes. 

But wild, Prince Hal was, and the Lord Chief Justice 

iPart II., Act v., Scene 3. 



HAL'S ALTERED GHAUAGTEIL 127 

was quite justified, from what he knew of his future 
king, in saying to the sympathetic Warwick : 

I would his majesty had called me ^vith him, 
The service that I truly did his life, 
Hath left me open to all Id juries.' 

The general feeling that Henry V. will be ruled by 
tavern ministers, is voiced in the spiteful speech of his 
brother Clarence : 

Well, you must now speak, Sir John Falstaff fair, 
Which swims against your stream of quality.* 

The new king, upon whom the " gorgeous garment 
majesty sits not so easy," is well aware of this feeling 
against him, and speedily answers it in a way that 
sends joy chasing the care from noble cheeks and 
brows. 

Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear. 
This is the English, not the Turkish court. 
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, 
But Harry, Harry. ^ 

This was good nev/s, for Amurath the Turk signal- 
ized his accession to the throne by butchering the 
friends and relations of the preceding monarch and all 
who could be possible successors of himself. One by 
one the young king addresses and wins his court. His 
brothers, his barons, even the chief justice, whom he 
mischievously keeps upon the rack a moment, only to 

'Part II., Act v., Scene 2. 2 ibid. 3 ibid. 



128 REJECTION OF FALSTAFF. 

release him with higher honors than he had yet worn, 
all are made to see the truth of the wild heir's words : 

Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares. 

I survive 
To mock the expectation of the world, 
To frustrate prophecies.' 

To the astonishment of the realm, nobles, and people, 
the wild Prince Hal is transformed into the buoyant, 
hopeful, splendid king, under whose rule England sang 
her supremest song of triumph as a nation for many 
a day. Even Falstaff fell, and in his fall lies the one 
stain, or apparent stain, upon the dramatic character 
of Henry V. The scene seems cruel in which he re- 
nounces and exiles the man who had been his resource 
for wit and sympathy in the arid days of banishment 
from court. It is pathetic, the eager, turbulent, boast- 
ful haste with which the fat old knight scrambled to 
throAV himself in Henry's way. 

My king ! my jove ! I speak to thee, my heart. ^ 

The king's scornful reply even did not penetrate the 
thick crust of his well-grounded conceit : 

I know thee not, old man : fall to thy prayers. 
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester. 
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man, 
So surfeit swelled, so old and so profane : 
But being awake I do despise my dream. 

1 Part II. , Act v., Scene 3. 2 Part II., Act V., Scene 5. 



FATE OF FALSTAFF. 129 

Eeplv not to me with a fool born jest, 
Presume not that I am the thing I was. 

For competence of life I will allow yon, 

That lack of means enforce you not to evil. 

And, as we hear you do reform yourselves. 

We will, according to your strength and qualities, 

Give you advancement. ^ 

The trembling old discarded scamp will have it in 
his heart that these words are for effect. He whispers 
to Shallow, " Do not you grieve at this ; I shall be sent 
for in private to him ; but look you, he must seem thus 
to the Avorld." And goes off mumbling in senile assur- 
ance, " I shall be sent for soon, at night." ' But the 
time was never to be. This casting off is cruel as we 
read it, but it was the poetic way of marking a point 
in the evolution of Hal's character, which the careful 
reader perceives is taking place all along. 

Falstaff is not a real character, but a personification 
of the reckless youth of the Prince, under which lay 
ripening the splendid potency of his manhood. No one 
of all Shakespeare's heroes grows under our eye as this 
one of Henry Y. One stage marking the changing of 
the old order, is the banishment of Falstaff and his fel- 
lows from court. And yet there is a side to Falstaff' 
which inevitably draws us to him. We see that the 
Prince must have cast him off, and that he considered 
his old age enough to provide a comfortable resting- 
place for the gray head. We hear of him but once 
again. It is this scene, probably, which causes sen- 
timent to enter so deeply into our reading of the 

' Part II., Act v., Scene 5. 2 ibid. 

9 



130 THE NEW ENGLAND. 

pseudo-knight's character. It is among roughs, and 
the message is borne by an outcast, but it is tlie death 
of Jack Falstaff, who " fumbled wi' the sheets, and 
played with flowers, and smiled upon his lingers' ends, 
and babbled o' green fields," and they said the " king 
has killed his heart." ' 

So died the shadow of that once proud knighthood 
which was dying all about him ; with now and then 
a flickering gleam of its old splendid spirit, and now 
and then a flaming up in the socket of its former glo- 
rious power, but passing because its time was past. 
New figures were on the stage. New scenes occu- 
pied them. England was rousing herself from the old 
lair of feudal tyranny, and shaking the mighty spears 
of her serried yeomanry, led as of old by the barons, 
loyal as not of old, first to the nation, and not to men 
whose quarrel might any time turn them against their 
king. And so came Henry of that name the Fifth to 
rule the sceptred isle of England, and to extend her 
sway again across the seas, bringing back from France 
a new kingdom at his girdle and a noble wife at his 
side. 

1 Henry V,, Act II., Scene 3, 



HENEY V, 

The Famous Victories of Henry V., Containing the Hon- 
orable Battell of Agincourt, last half, afforded Shake- 
speare a slight groundwork for this play as for the pre- 
ceding. Hall's Chronicle is the principal source of its 
history, however, and for the comedy Shakespeare is 
entirely responsible. 

The date of this play is (probably) the middle of the 
year 1599. The only copy of it printed in the author's 
lifetime was a miserably imperfect and garbled one, 
which was surreptitiously published, made up from 
notes taken in the theatre during a performance. 

It was first published, complete and unmarred, in 
the First Folio. 



CHRONOLOGY OF HENRY V. 

1413, Henry crowned upon the death of his father. He allays 
still further the domestic troubles of the kingdom by recon- 
ciling to his cause the young Earl of March, and the Percy 
family. 

1414-15. France distracted by internal feuds. Charles VI., 
the king, subject to fits of insanity. Government carried on 
by his brother, Louis of Orleans, and his cousin, John of Bur- 
gundy, who were- bitter rivals. Henry V. takes advantage 
of this state of affairs to make extravagant demands upon 
France, embracing certain provinces, the hand of the Princess 
Katharine, a large sum of money — finally the crown itself, in 
right of his descent from Edward III. 

1415. These terms rejected, Henry determines to invade 
France. A domestic conspiracy is discovered between the 
Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, and Sir Thomas Grey, in 
behalf of the claims of the young Earl of March, to the throne 
(although probably without his knowledge). Conspirators 
arrested and executed. Henry and his army lay siege to 
Harfleur, which capitulates September 22d. Henry moves 
toward Calais, October 8th. Battle of Agincourt, October 
25th. Henry returns in triumph to London, November 23d. 

1416. France still distracted. Burgundy allies himself with 
Henry. Desultory warfare. 

1417. Henry again lands in France, meeting with small suc- 
cesses. 

1418. Burgundy allies himself with the queen-regnant against 
the Dauphin and the Orleans faction. 

1419. Henry and the Burgundy faction have a meeting, but 
negotiations fail on account of the former's excessive de- 
mands. Burgundy makes overtures to the Dauphin, who dur- 
ing a meetino; causes the duke to be assassinated. The new 



CHRONOLOGY OF HENRY V. 133 

Duke of Burgundy breaks off negotiations with the Dauphin, 
and brings his party (including the queen and Princess 
Katharine) to Henry V.'s allegiance. 

1420. Treaty of Troyes (May 21), by which the King of Eng- 
land was to receive the hand of the Princess Katharine ; to 
be immediate regent of the kingdom ; and to be recognized 
as successor to the crown on the death of Charles YI. 
Henry marries Katharine, June 2. 

1422. Henry V. dies. 



CHAPTEE V. 

HENRY V. — England's song of triumph. 

Sources of the play. — Its epic character. — The use of the chorus. — One 
great historical event its theme. — The battle of Agincourt. — Events 
leading up to this triumph of English arms. — The long Franco-English 
duel, — Internal broils of France at Henry's accession. — Restlessness of 
the English nobles. — Attitude of the clergy. — Henry's pretentions to 
the French crown. — The Salic law. — Defiance of the "tennis-balls." — 
Misinterpretation of the frivolous youth of Henry. — Use made of the 
comedy element. — Conspiracy of the nobles, ''gilt with French gold." 
— Divided French opinions as to Henry's ability. — The siege and fall 
of Harfleur. — Catholic make up of the Englis^ army. — Henry's with- 
drawal toward Calais. — The eve of Agincourt. — Hopes and fears of 
England. — Night scenes before the battle. — Henry among his troops. — 
The battle of Agincourt and total defeat of the French. — Henry's re- 
turn to England. — Interregnum of war. — Alliance of Burgundy and 
England. — Treaty of Troyes. — Henry acknowledged heir of the French 
crown. — The Dauphin continues desultory war. — Marriage of Henry 
and Katharine. — Character of Henry as further developed.— A type 
of England's ideal of royalty — The fallacious glory of foreign conquest. 

In the epilogue to Henry IV. we have an indication 
of the scope of this play. We are promised a cam- 
paign in France, an introduction to the fair Princess 
Katharine, and perhaps further escapades with Fal- 
staff. 

The poet fulfils his promises to the letter, save in 
the latter particular. Of Falstaff we read only con- 
cerning his death. It is a dramatic touch. The king's 
old life is dead in the person of his former boon com- 
panion. The Henry who fares forth with gallant 
armies to strike at the ancient foe of England is no 



EPICAL CHARACTER OF THE PLAY. 135 

longer the Hal who consorted with the amateur high- 
waymen of Eastcheap. The close-fitting crown of his 
father, subdued and solemnized, as well as exalted, the 
one time roisterer in taverns. The character of the 
prince formerly "neighbored by fruit of baser quality " 
growing " like the summer grass, fastest by night " had 
been perfected. With Falstaff passed the shadow from 
his career. We now behold him as the central figure 
of a great epic, for epical in its character the play of 
Henry V. is, as taken altogetlier as one production the 
whole series is. We have war now on a grand scale. 
No little contention is this between barons, no spear- 
thrusting of civil factions ; but war in its most glorious 
aspect, if war can ever be glorious. In the chorus 
which speaks between the acts of the play, the story 
of this war is epitomized and explained. It is the 
first use in these plays of this literary form patterned 
after the classic model. It is used as an interpreter 
and illustration of what precedes and follows it. 
Chorus paints broadly what the acts and scenes depict 
in detail. It served to whet the appetite of an Eng- 
lish audience for the feast of victory and triumph to be 
spread before it. 

One great and shining historical event is the central 
motif of this play — the battle of Agincourt — fit succes- 
sor to English arms, of Cressy and Poitiers. 

The play summarizes in ' dramatic clearness, and 
with much historic faithfulness, both the events that 
led up to this point, and the results which flowed from 
it. 

England and France had long been rivals. The 
duello between the two great powers was perennially 



136 TREATY OF BHETIGNY. 

taking active form. By the treaty of Edward III., 
after Cressy, a truce had been patched up, unsatisfac- 
tory because insincere. The fatal persistence of Eng- 
lish kings in claiming foreign provinces since the time 
of King John, kept hot and feverish the terms of 
peace between the two countries. When Henry V. 
came to his throne in 1413, France was rent asunder^ 
by internal broils. Two great parties strove for the 
mastery, the king's party and that of the Duke of 
Burgundy. The king was insane ; his wife not quite 
capable of dealing with great affairs ; the Dauphin, or 
heir-apparent, a young man, liable to be influenced by 
the factions which divided his future heritage, and held 
in check by a partisan, the Count Armagnac. 

As if this were not enough for the unhappy people 
of France to face and deal with, a claim is put forth 
by ISeury V. of England for the throne, in right of 
inheritance from Edw^ard III. 

Shakespeare discusses the question of Henry's right 
to the French croAvn in a very learned and apparently 
satisfactory manner : 

His true title to some certain dukedoms, 
And generally to the crown and seat of France, 
Derived from Edward his great grandfather.' 

But the claim seems really to have been a shallow one. 
By the treaty of Edward III. England was entitled to 
certain possessions in France, notably the duchy of 
Normandy, and Touraine, the earldoms of Anjou .'uid 
Maine, and the duchy of Brittany ; but the treaty had 
never been fulfilled ; England had been actually de- 

1 Act I., Seen? 1. 



HENRY'S CLAIMS. 1P>7 

frauded of tlie spoils of war granted under that treaty, 
and these were the provinces to which Henry V. had 
some show of right to lay claim. But these did not 
constitute a shadow of a right to the crown itself. In- 
deed Henry did not at first — before the campaign pre- 
ceding Agincourt — pretend to the throne, although he 
made a vague renewal of the old claim of Edward JII., 
which was scouted. He then demanded these prov- 
inces only. But with them he made some extra ter- 
ritorial requests which were sure to arouse the ire of 
the French, namely, the hand of Katharine in marriage 
and two millions of crowns hard cash. 

We quote here the careful historian. Knight : " The 
French Government consented to give up all the an- 
cient territories of Aquitaine and to marry the daugh- 
ter of Charles VI. to Henry, with a dowry of six hun- 
dred thousand crowns, afterwards increased to eight 
hundred thousand, . . . and the demand of Henry 
for the cession of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou v\-as 
rejected. The French then sent an embassy to Eng- 
land, when Henry demanded Normandy, and all the 
territories ceded by the peace of Bretigny, under 
the threat that he would otherwise take arms to en- 
force his claim to the crown of France." ' This was 
the state of affairs when the play opens, early in the 
year 1414. 

France was broken in two by factional broils. The 
hated English were looking on with greedy and am- 
bitious eyes. Henry V. was the centre of interest. 
What would he do ? To understand the king's posi- 
tion we may revert to the previous play, and quote 

^ Knight's History of i:ngland, Vol. II., Cb. 1., p. 17. 



138 UNREST OF THE ENGLISH NOBLES. 

again the wise words of Bolingbroke on his death -bed, 
to the so]i who was to succeed him : 

Yet though thou standest more sure than I could do, 

Thou art uot lirm enough, since griefs are green. 

And all my friends, whom thou must make thy friends, 

Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out, 

By whose fell working I was first advanced, 

And by whose power I well might lodge a fear 

To be again displaced. Which to avoid 

I cut them ofi'; and had a purpose now 

To lead out many to the Holy Land, 

Lest rest, and lying still, might make them look 

Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry, 

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds 

With foreign quarrels.^ 

The nobles about Henry's court were, as ever, restless. 
War was their chief delight, their prime occupation. 
The playful description of Hotspur's appetite for 
strife in the previous play is hardly exaggerated from 
the real attitude of the English soldier, noble, and 
man-at-arms of the times. " I am not of Percy's 
mind," cries Hal, who was so like to Percy afterward 
in the craving for battle, " I am not of Percy's mind, 
the Hotspur of the north ; he that kills me some six 
or seven dozen Scots at a breakfast, Avashes his hands 
and says to his wife, ' Fie upon this cpiiet life, I want 
w^ork.' ' O, my SAveet Harry,' says she, 'how many 
hast thou killed to-day?' 'Give my roan horse a 
drench,' says he, and answers an hour after, 'some 
fourteen; a trifle, a trifle.'"'^ The characteristic of 

1 Henry IV.. Part II., Act IV., Scene 4. 

2 Henry IV.. Part I., Act II., Scene 4. 



ATTITUDE OF THE CLERGY. 139 

tlie brawny Englisliman, whose idea of amusement is 
said to be to go out and kill something, has a bit of 
historic truth in it. Certainly the lords who were 
gathered about the young King Henry were pining for 
the smell of blood and the clash of arms. Failing in 
this as against their foreign enemies, they were sure 
to find some cause for buckling ou the sword at home. 
Bolingbroke's advice was in the line of broad states- 
manship, and Henry the Fifth was fully aware of its 
value. The failure of France, due, perhaps, largely to 
her own internal trouble, to keep the truce of Bretigny, 
was reason, or at least occasion, for the busying of 
giddy minds with foreign quarrels. Already treason 
was hatching, centering in the pretension of the young 
Earl of March to the throne, although Henry had re- 
leased him from prison, and he himself was not mov- 
ing in the matter. 

And now the king found an unexpected spur given 
to his warlike plans. The attitude of the clergy of his 
realm was in his favor. It must be remembered that 
we are reading of the days of John Huss (1415) and 
the Council of Constance (1414). The stirrings of 
Keformation were troubling the peace of the Church. 
The state, its stout ally, and often obedient servant, 
was looking curiously and enviously into the enormous 
and well-filled treasuries of bishop and abbot. In the 
previous reign a bill had been proposed in Parliament 
which would have passed, 

But tliat the scambling and unquiet time 
Did push it out of further question.' 

1 Act I., Scene I. 



140 THE KING'S MOTIVES. 

And this bill, the Archbishop of Canterbury com- 
plains to the Bishop of Ely in the opening scene of 
this play, 

If it pass against us, 

We lose the better half of onr possession. 

For all the temporal lands wliicli men devout 

By testament have given to the Church, 

Would they strip from us.' 

This was not only drinking deep, but drinking cup 
and all, as Canterbury puts it. There must be some- 
thing done, for this self -same bill is noAv proposed 
again. It was to the interest of the Churchmen that 
Henry and his restless nobles should be occupied 
abroad. Anything seemed a noble quest that would 
seek quarry elsewhere than in the Church. The one 
thing lacking to, and needed by, Henry in his foreign 
w^ars was money. It were better 

to give a greater sum, 
Than ever at one time, the clergy yet 
Did to his predecessors part withal,"^ 

than to lose forever half their estates. But more than 
this did the clever Churchmen do for the foreign wars. 
They succeeded in making them not only respectable 
but obligatory upon the conscience of the king. 

It is not at all certain that Henry was over-con- 
scientious in the matter of pushing pike and exchang- 
ing shots with his insane royal brother across the 
Channel. Hudson's eulogy of Henry's motives and 
scruples here is altogether strained.'^ It is the fault of 

1 Act I., Scene 1. 2 ibid. 

3 Hudson's Life Art and Characters, Vol. II., p. 134. 



THE SALIC LAW. 141 

even the best of critics, and Hudson ranks as one of 
the best, to see no faults in their heroes. That Henry 
was glad to have the voice of the Church on his side 
goes without saying ; that he would have stayed his 
purpose without it, we may doubt. 

The argument of the chorus in Scene 2 of Act I. is 
appropriately used by the dramatist to mark the fact 
that Henry must have presented his claims to France 
in a formal and legal document. It reads in the play 
like the result of a lawyer's struggle to embalm his 
brief in blank verse. 

The stumbling-block is the Salic law, which barred 
inheritance through the female line, and Henry's claim, 
if any just claim he had, was through Isabella, Queen 
of Edward II., daughter of the French Philip the Fair, 
from whom he was fourth in direct descent. Isabella's 
two brothers both died. The crown fell, under the 
provisions of the Salic law, to Charles, the younger 
brother of Philip, and his descendant was now upon 
the throne. 

The apostrophe to the Archbishop of Canterbury to 
beware of wresting the truth in order to establish the 
English claim to French sovereignty, is one of those 
fine bursts of eloquence wdth which the whole play is 
charged, and which Shakespeare delighted to put in 
the mouth of the favorite hero. 

And God forbid, rav good and faitlifal lord, 

That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, 

Or nicely charge your understanding soul 

With opening title miscreate, whose right 

Suits not in native colors with the truth : 

For God doth know bow many now in health 



U2 THE KING'S POLICY. 

Shall drop their blood in approbation 
Of what your reverence shall incite us to. 
Therefore take heed how yon impawn our person 
How you awake our sleejoing sword of war J 

It must be noted here, in behalf of the truth of history, 
that those who take their history from Shakespeare 
should have before them in this and like passages the 
large and broad conception the poet had of poetic 
license. There is nothing on record to cause us to 
think that Henry V. was more conscientious in his 
international policy than other rulers before and after 
him. All that Hudson draws his inference from, such 
as this and similar speeches ; his thanksgiving to God 
for victory ; his Non nobis and Te Deum after Agincourt ; 
might be paralleled in the career of most monarchs of 
those days. Religious phrases were very current, not 
as cant but as familiar daily speech. The Church of 
the pre-Eeformation period was the most real of all 
institutions to an Englishman. A man was a Chris- 
tian as he was a citizen. The king in this play is no 
more conspicuously pious than the majority of people. 
There is a grace and tenderness about the poet's favor- 
ite conception of the kingly character, and a glamour 
upon the page which portrays him to us. But history 
is one thing and poetry another. Henry Avas a manly 
prince, noble and generous, and after the fashion of his 
age pious ; but we need not be called upon to believe 
that he was endowed with any supernatural qualities. 

The Salic law is reasoned away by the learned 
Archbishop in a clever manner.^ The argument is a 

J Act I. , Scene 2. 2 ibid. 



THE SALIC LAW NO BAR. 143 

puzzling one. Even Courtenay, the most painstaking 
of delvers, gives up its solution. We need not at- 
tempt to unravel it, briefly quoting a few lines of the 
ingenious Churchman's explanation : 

The land Salique is in Germany, 
Between the floods of Sala and the Elbe ; 
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons, 
There left behind and settled certain French, 
Who, holding in disdain the German women 
For some dishonest manners of their life, 
Established then this law : to wit, no female 
Should be inheritrix in Salique land ; 
Which Salique, as I said, 'twixt Elbe and Sala, 
Is at this day in German called Meisen.' 

Henry is easily convinced by all this array of facts 
and inferences that the Salic law was not a bar to his 
just claims. The conviction was borne in upon him 
with the sanction and express commission of the 
Church. The Old Testament is quoted in behalf of 
" unwinding the bloody flag."- There is another ob- 
stacle, however, an obstacle often in England's w^ay, 
the fear of a Scotch invasion. Says the king : 

For you shall read that my great-grandfather 
Never went with his forces into France 
But the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom 
Came pouring like the tide into a breach. 
With ample and brimfulness of his force, 
Galling the gleaned land with hot essays, 
Girding with grievous siege castles and towns. 

1 Act I., Scene «. = Numbers xxvii. 8. 



14:i FEAR OF SCOTCH INVASION. 

Westmoreland drops into ancient and poetical tradi- 
tion : 

But there's a saying, very old and true : 
" If that you will France win, 
Then with Scotland first begin." ' 

The ingenious archbishop once more comes to the res- 
cue in these puzzled counsels, and in one of the fa- 
mous passages of the play delivers his parable of the 
bees, the moral of which is that the state is divided, 
like a swarm of bees, into different classes with divers 
functions, therefore : 

Divide you happy England into four, 
Whereof you take one quarter into France, 
And you withal shall make all Gallia shake. 
If we, with thrice such powers left at home, 
Cannot defend our own doors from the dog. 
Let us be worried.'^ 

The king now resolves upon the war, and having pre- 
pared himself by argument, and what was of more 
importance, with the sinews of war furnished by the 
large gift of the clergy, he receives an embassy from 
the French court. 

In all this was Henry more ambitious than consci- 
entious ? Shakespeare hints at the former while de- 
claring the latter : 

France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe, 
Or break it all to pieces : . . . 

Either our history shall with full mouth 
Speak freely of our acts : or our grave 

lAr.tL, Scene2. ajbid. 



THE TENNIS-BALLS. 145 

Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth, 
Not worshipped with a waxeu epitaph.' 

Here speaks the proud ambitions monarcli. So far, 
and not to his discredit relatively, he was a product of 
his times. 

He meets the French embassy, and in this meeting 
the poet cleverly pictures how the Nemesis of Henry, 
in the shape of ghosts from his wild youth, rise up 
now to check his pride. At home and among his own 
people these ghosts had faded away. The wild i^rince 
was forgotten in the gallant king. But his reputa- 
tion abroad had yet to be cleansed of the stains that 
marked the Falstaffian period. In answer to his claims 
upon the French croAvn, the ambassador of Charles 
YI. says bluntly and somewhat indiscreetly : 

The prince our master 
Says that you savor too much of your youth, > 
And bids you be advised there's naught in France 
That can be with a nimble galliard won : 
You cannot revel into dukedoms there. ^ 

And forthwith presents the astonished and offended 
king with a set of tennis-balls as a more appropriate 
occupation for his talents. This episode of the tennis- 
balls is taken from the old play, whence it was adopted 
from the Chronicles. 

Henry acknowledges the bitter mockery and returns 

a manly reply : 

And we understand him well, 
How he comes o'er us with our wilder days 
Not measuring what use we made of them. 

1 Act I., Scenes. 2 ibid. 

10 



146 ^l^y ENGLISH CONSPIRACY. 

But tel] the daupbin I will keep my state, 
Be like a king and show my sail of greatness 
When I do rouse me in my throne of France. 

And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his 
Hath turned his balls to gun-stones : and his soul 
SJiall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance 
That shall fly with them. 

His jest shall savor but of shallow wit 

When thousands weep more than do laugh at it ? ' 

With Act II., warned by the chonis, we are brought 
now to look upon the seamy side of the English court. 
A conspiracy is brooding, and although Shakespeare 
makes no mention of the actual cause, sufficiently in- 
dicating his idea that the conspirators were " gilt with 
French gold " — the real occasion for it doubtless was 
some attempt to unseat Harry in favor of the Earl of 
March, who, Avhether knowing to the scheme or not, 
was now a trusted officer in the royal army. 

On the threshold of his French campaign the king 
is thus reminded of the words of his dying father, that 
the wounds of his own usurpation were yet green, and 
the stings but newly taken out. Scene 2 of Act II., 
reveals the unravelling of the conspiracy against the 
king's life, showing that French intrigue had much to 
do with it, but personal ambition more. Henry's ad- 
dress to the guilty nobles, especially to Lord Scroop, 
is most affecting : 

Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, 
That knewest the very bottom of my soul, 
That almost mightst have coined me into gold, 

1 Act I. , Scene 2. 



II EMI Y SETS FORTH. 147 

Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use ? 
May it be possible that foreign hire 
Could out of thee extract one spark of evil 
That might annoy my finger? ' 

But the Avliole evil of this transaction lay not in the 
single fact of a conspiracy, discovered in time and its 
purpose headed off. It must have to an extent unset- 
tled the minds of those who were loyal and faithful 
and devoted to their king's interest, making thena sus- 
picious even of each other and fearful of what treason 
might fall out. The poet intimates this in the sad 
words of Henry, in this same address : 

Such, and so finely bolted didst thou seem, 
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot, 
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued, 
"With some suspicion.''' 

However, the conspiracy once exposed and its mem- 
bers executed, the king drops all thought of domestic 
troubles, trusting in a large Avay to the general good 
faith in his people, the exciting pleasures of a popular 
war, and the high hopes of a great victory to settle all 
internal broils. Now : 

Cheerily to sea the signs of war advance. 
No King of England, if not King of France. ^ 

With this watchword Henr}' set forth from South- 
ampton in the midsummer of 1415. 

We may pause here to notice the use of the comedy 
element in this play, in so far as it illustrates the his- 

> Act II., Scene 2. a Ibid. » Ibid. 



148 COMEDY OF THE PLAY. 

toric situation. It is distinctly lower comedy in one 
set of characters and higher in another, than that 
which centred about Falstaff in Henry lY. The old 
knight's companions are all in these wars, and repre- 
sent the attitude of the rascal element of England's 
population toward the warlike spirit of England's king. 

Now all the youth of England are on fire, 
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.' 

But what of Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph ? They, too, 
are all on fire. There is a stir in the tavern parlor. 
There is a bringing out of rusty swords, a shaking out 
of stained armor. " We'll be all three sworn brothers 
in France," ' in spite of quarrels and grudges at home. 
But not I fancy because " honor's thought reigns solely 
in the breast of every man."^ Pistol will go so far as 
to pay his debts, though he is of the opinion " Base is 
the slave that pays." 

For I shall sutler be 
Unto the camp, and profits will accrue.* 

And cries again : 

Let us to France, like liorse-leeches, my boys, 
To suck, . . . the very blood to suck.^ 

The war was thus approved by the stained brava- 
does. There was nothing to lose, and possibly much 
to gain. They could afford to dissolve ancient 
grudges, knowing each other's rascal nature, and the 
advantage of union in a common cause. We may not 

1 Chorus to Act II. 2 Act II., Scene 1. ^ Chorus to Act 11. 
4 Act II., Scene 1. ^ Act 11., Scene 3. 



GO WEE'S COMMENT. 149 

say there was not some lagging sense of loyalty to the 
king. Many have the finer feelings deeply encrusted 
with sordid actions. Perhaps, on the Avhole, the philo- 
sophic Gower sums up this phase of English life as 
aptly as could be, in discoursing of ancient Pistol with 
his friend Fluellau : 

Why, 'tis a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and tlien goes to 
the wars to grace himself at his return into London under the 
form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great 
commanders' names. And they will learn you by rote where 
great services were done : at such and such a sconce, at sucli a 
breach, at such a convoy : who came off bravely, who was shot, 
who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on : and this they 
can perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with 
new-tuned oaths : and what a beard of the general's cut and a 
horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale- 
washed wits, is wonderful to be thought on.^ 

Mean^vhile in France there are search ings of heart, 
but under the influence of an impression that Henry 
is to be lightly esteemed on account of his wild days, 
there is no movement to heal internal divisions. 

Shakespeare does not attempt to follow accurately 
the real embassies that passed between the two king- 
doms any more than he professes to give the actual 
words that were spoken. And there is no need, for 
purposes of gathering the true spirit of the history of 
those times, that we should seek to identify occasions. 
In the scene in the French king's palace,^ Burgundy is 
represented as being present. But he was at this very 
time hostile to the king, and the active enemy of the 
Orleans party, of which the king was nominal head. 

1 Act III., Scone 6. ^ Act II , Scene 4. 



150 DIVIDED (JOUNGILS IN FRANCE. 

The duke did, however, send troops to the aid of his 
king, at first, to repel English invasion. He considered 
it patriotic and politic. Afterward, as we shall see, he 
withdrew his aid, and even joined forces with the Eng- 
lish. This scene is valuable as noting the existence of 
two parties among the French, the one despising, the 
other estimating at their full value, the worth of Eng- 
lish armies. 

The old king in one of his fits of sanity urges : 

To line and new repair our towns of war 
With men of courage and with means defendant : 
For England his approaches makes, as fierce 
As waters to the sucking of a gulf.' 

The Dauphin barely grants that " the sick and 
feeble parts of France " should be looked to, and 
scorns any serious show of fear : 

No, with no more than if we heard that England 
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance, 
For, mv good liege, she is so idly kinged 
Her sceptre so fantastically borne 
By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth. 
That fear attends her not.'^ 

The king is mindful of the past, as well he might be. 
He knows the strain of blood in Henry is the same 

That haunted us in our familiar paths, 
Witness our too much memorable shame, 
When Cressy battle fatally was struck. 

This is a stem of that victorious stock.'^ 
» Act II. Scene 4. '' Ibid . ^ Ibid. 



FALL OF HARFLEUR. 151 

But the Dauphin's mind was the mind of all young 
France, and fatally young France paid for it. 

We are next before Harlieur. The chorus that in- 
troduces the third act is a rare example of poetic 
genius dealing with otherwise dry details. Dr. John- 
son could see nothing in this introduction of the cho- 
rus but a clumsy device. We wonder how he could 
have failed to perceive both its use and beauty, espe- 
cially this one and that in Act lY. 

We are now greeted by tlie noble strain : 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, 
Or close the wall up with our English dead ; ' 

a strain unworn by constant quotation, unhackneyed 
by trite allusions. Like the splendid harmonies of a 
master-musician it throbs and thrills us as we read, in 
spite of the declamations of the school-room and the 
parsing exercises of childhood. 

Harfleur was not won offhand. For more than a 
month the English army battered at its walls, under- 
mined its towers, lay leech-like in its trenches, sucking 
its life-blood. In vain the besieged looked for relief. 
It never came. France was distracted in her head and 
members. Factions were warring with each other, 
while a populous city begged in vain for help against 
the common foe. 

Harfleur fell, and Henry gave thanks for the victory 
in the church of St. Martin, which he entered barefoot 
and in humility. His position was a curious one. By 
his own profession he appeared to the French people 
not as a destroying conqueror who sought their dis- 

» Act III., Scene 1. 



152 THE KINO\S PERPLEXITY. 

tress, but as a f aitlif ul sovereign, shuddering at the civil 
dissensions of Burgundians and Orleanists. He pre- 
sented himself as the savior of France, her rightful king, 
protecting her from her erring and quarrelsome sons. 

But with the conquest of Harlleur Henry found him- 
self in desperate straits. His army had wasted away 
by fevers, by wounds, by death. It was a costly vic- 
tory he had won. He might hold the city for a time, 
but to what advantage? It seemed as though he must 
go back to England with his reduced army, with little 
booty and no glory, save that of storming and carrying 
a town he could not hold. He was urged by the faint- 
hearted to return at Once by sea. A few days would 
restore the army to its home. A few hours' journey by 
sea would take them out of the toils into which they 
had so gallantly plunged, and place them again in the 
silken dalliance they loved. But Henry saw not affairs 
so. He was urged to another course, both by personal 
pride and the sure and certain knowledge of how frail 
a hold upon ' the throne his would be, did he fail now 
to satisfy the English thirst for glory and foreign con- 
quest. He would not yield to the cry of his council to 
return. He determined to march to Calais. Just what 
the king expected to gain by this march, history does 
not tell. It w^as not that he expected or wanted the 
pitched battle which was the actual result of this cam- 
paign. Probably it was a leap in the dark, a trusting 
to Providence, and, as the old chronicler writes, " re- 
lying upon the divine grace and the righteousness of 
his cause, piously considering that victory does not 
consist in multitudes." Action of some sort was de- 
manded of him, and whether his course was prudently 



AOINGOURT. 153 

taken, it was justified iu its result. Like the charge 
at Balaklava its rashness was forgotten in its success, 
and its tentative foolishness in its practical wisdom, as 
events fell out. 

So Harfleur is left behind, and the weakened and at 
times discouraged army set forth amid clouds of dark- 
ness. They saw nothing before them but a dangerous 
journey with an uncertain end. But before them was 
a glory that paled not before any after-achievement of 
English arms. Shakespeare is here again the inter- 
preter of that thought with Aviiich all these English 
plays are charged ; that kings are but pawns and 
knights but common men, in the great sweep of na- 
tional movements. As none could look forward from 
Harfleur to' Agincourt, so none from thb bright glories 
of Henry's triumjDhant fields could perceive the clouds 
hanging low over England in the reign of his son. 

We may examine here the other and difterent side of 
the comedy element of this play, which we have noted 
as being of a higher character than that in the two 
parts of Henry IV. The Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph 
coterie is contrasted with that of Fluellen, Macmorris, 
and Jamy, petty ofiicers in the royal army. These 
add a lighter vein to the story while not dropping to 
the vulgar level of Eastcheap. But as dramatis per- 
sonam they have an historical significance also, in in- 
dicating the catholic make-up of the English ranks. 
Fluellen is a Welshman, and perhaps had fought 
against the king's father under the irregular and wild 
Glendower. Macmorris is an Irishman, one of those 
" rug-headed kerns," possibly, against Avhom the Eng- 
lish sovereigns were perpetually making campaigns, as 



154 ON TO CALAIS. 

in Richard II.'s time. Jamj is a canny Scotchman, 
and the Scotch, as the beginning of this play suffi- 
ciently indicates, were always in a state of revolt. 
And yet here they were together, wearing the feather, 
the shamrock, and the thistle into one common em- 
blem against the common foe. It was significant of 
the growing solidarity of the English people emerging 
from the petty statecraft of feudalism. It was signifi- 
cant of the growing homogeneousness of the English 
people, by whatever local name they might be called. 
It was a fulfilment of the prophecy of Bolingbroke's 
last words, that occupation for a common glorious 
cause abroad must tend more than anything else to 
prevent the breaking out of small revolts against the 
house of Lancaster at home. It is true that the most 
savage of civil wars was yet to come, but the catholic 
comprehension of Henry V.'s army before Harfleur 
and at Agincourt were symbolic of that oneness of 
national purpose which was to close the wounds of 
civil war with the death of the last Plantagenet, never 
again to be reopened for reasons of state. For after 
Bosworth field the internal feuds of England were theo- 
logical and ecclesiastical in their inception, not civil. 

On the march now toward Calais ; the poet noting 
from time to time by alternate scenes from the French 
and English head-quarters, the state of feeling, the 
hopes and fears, the boastings and brave words of both. 
"God of battles," cries the Constable of France, 

"Where have they this mettle? 
Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull ? 
On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale.' 

1 Act III., Scenes. 



THE LAST OF BARDOLPII. 155 

And yet he accurately estimates the bedraggled con- 
dition of the English troops : 

Sony am I his niTmbers are so few, 
His soldiers sick and famished in the march ; 
For I am sure when he shall see our army 
He'll drop his heaii into the sink of fear.' 

And to speak truth, the French brag and bluster had 
a strong basis whereon to flourish. Henry's army was 
in a desperate strait. Still it marched on as soldiers 
march who believe in their leader. And Harry's troops 
believed in him, although he lacked no discipline, and 
punished offences among his own men in a way that 
boded ill for his enemies. 

Anent which we come once more, and for the last 
time, across the rogue Bardolph. Fluellen addresses 
the king, who has asked him wdiat the losses were 
among his soldiers : " Marry, for my part I think the 
Duke hath lost never a man but one that is like to be 
executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your 
majesty know the man : his face is all bubukles and 
welks and knobs and flames of fire: and his lips 
plough at his nose."^ 

So the poet used the historic fact of a man's steal- 
ing a pyx, recorded by the chroniclers, to speed the 
prince's former companion to a fitting end. 

With the chorus to the Fourth Act we join the rival 
camps on the eve of Agincourt. 

Now entertain conjecture of a time 

When creeping murmur and the poring dark 

Fills the wide vessel of the universe. 

1 Act III., Scene 5. ^ Act III , Scene C. 



156 PREPARATION FOR BATTLE. 

From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night. 
The hum of either army stilly sounds.' 

In the English camp there is realization of great im- 
pending danger : " The greater therefore should our 
courage be," cries the king. 

There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
Would men observingly distil it out, 
For our bad neighbor makes us early stiiTers, 
Which is both healthful and good husbandry."^ 

But Henry does not confine himself to encouraging 
the leaders : 

For forth he goes and visits all his hosts, 
Bids them good-morrow with a modest smile, 
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.^ 

And as he talks now to this one, now that, the brag- 
ging Pistol, the sententious Fluellen, the king uncovers 
in a modest, noble Avay that which must be the grief of 
great men, on whom lesser men depend: "I think the 
king is but a man as I am : the violet smells to him as 
it doth to me ; the element show^s to him as it doth to 
me ; all his senses have but human conditions ; his 
ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a 
man; and though his affections are higher mounted 
than ours, yet when they stoop they stoop with the 
like wing." ^ 

Again, in protest against the common habit of lay- 
ing all sins at the king's door, especially the death of 

' Chorus to Act IV. •■' Act IV., Scene 1. 

3 Chorus to Act IV. * Act IV., Scene 1. 



NIGHT BEFORE BATTLE. 157 

soldiers in battle, he protests, unknown to the common 
soldier with whom he holds the conversation : 

The king is not bound to answer the particular endings of 
his soldiers ; the father of his son ; nor the master of his sei-- 
rant ; for they purpose not their death when they purpose their 
services.^ 

But while he makes the protest he realizes of how 
little w^eight it is : 

Upon the king, let us our lives, our souls, 

Our debts, our careful wives, 

Our children and our sins, lay on the king. 

We must bear all. 

O hard condition. Twin-born with greatness. 

What infinite heart's ease must kings neglect 
That private men enjoy. -' 

So with preparations in prayer, and masses, and rest- 
less sleep, and reliance upon God and king, the Eng- 
lish camp awaits the dawn soberly, quietly, grimly, in 
patience and with hope. 

The Frenchmen, on the other hand, are not like- 
minded. They infallibly believe in their success on 
the morrow. They even grieved that the English were 
so few, as it Avould tend to taint the glory of their 
arms. 

There is not work enough for all our hands, 
Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins, 
To give each naked curtle-axe a stain. ^ 

The night is passed in revelry, dice-throwing for the 
morrow's ransoms, boastful longings for the rising 

' Act IV. , Scene 1. ^ ibid. 3 Act IV., Scene 3. 



158 AQINGOURT.. 

suu. The truth is somewhat distorted here, although 
the spirit of the scene is^well preserved. The French 
were confident and full of braggadocio. They had a 
genuine contempt for their adversary, based perhaps 
upon a knowledge of how weak the Hariieur campaign 
had left him. But Shakespeare, in his whole treatment 
of the French side here, as afterward in Henry VI., 
shows a too strong patriotic bias to be entirely fair. It 
was the cue of the Elizabethan playwright to belittle 
and besmirch both France and Spain. The shilhngs of 
the groundlings rolled in more merrily to such tunes. 
But this provincial spirit is fatal to art. True, our poet 
but copied the chronicles. But as poet and artist he 
should here, as elsewhere, notably in King John and 
Henry YIIL, have decanted the spirit and left the old 
wine bottles out of sight. We must decide that in his 
handling of the French attitude in this play he was 
the Englishman before he was the artist — a grave fault, 
yet forced upon him to an extent by the limitation of 
his age. 

The shock of arms and Agincourt is over. An acci- 
dental meeting, not a preordained pitched battle, it re- 
flected the highest glory on the English arms, and, in 
its effects, pitched the highest note of England's great- 
est song of warlike triumph in any age. 

The march was resumed to Calais, and late in 
October Henry landed in England, the idolized mon- 
arch of a great people, every man of whom who had 
remained at home regretted it bitterly ; while every 
soldier who returned found free quarters on all sides 
and a welcome on all lips. 

The humility of the king's Non nobis and Tc Deum 



AN INTERREGNUM. 159 

found slight echo in the towns and Tillages of Eug- 
land. Unto Henry and themselves was the chief 
glory and the great renown. " His bruised helmet 
and his bended sword " were far more thought of than 
his humble "Not unto us but unto God." 

There is an interregnum now of two years, during 
which affairs in France go from bad to worse. The 
Emperor Sigismund occupied himseK in making an 
empty effort to secure terms of advantageous peace 
between his royal brothers of England and France. 

Burgundy carried on a desultory war with the Or- 
leans or xlrmagnac faction. Brigandage, on a greater or 
less scale, ravaged the fair country of France from end 
to end. Charles VI. was crazy most of the time, of 
which advantage is taken by the hostile duke. Henry 
Y. lands once more on foreign soil and proceeds to the 
final conquest of his ancient enemy. Biu'gundy turns 
traitor to his king and makes alliance with the English. 
Henry, pushing on from one success to another, occu- 
pies a large slice of French territory. The Count of 
Armagnac has in his control the young Dauphin : but 
Burgundy seizes the French queen, and wrests from 
her an appointment as governor-general of the realm. 
Bm-gundy, forgetting his alliance with Henry, was 
setting up, as ruler of France, his court at Paris ; the 
Dauphin's was at Poitiers. 

Henry besieges and reduces the great city of Bouen, 
whose inhabitants vainly looked for help from both the 
French leaders, who assumed to be the legitimate 
heads of government. 

Events now marched with rapid step. Burgundy and 
the queen seek an alliance with Henry. It was broken 



160 TREATY OF TROVES. 

off. Then the Dauphin seeks a reconciliation with 
Burgundy. It is proceeding favorably, when suddenly 
the young prince treacherously kills the duke. All 
hope of alliance between the French parties is now at 
an end. Philip the Good, son of the slain Duke of 
Burgundy, at once assumes his father's place and seeks 
out Henry of England. He ultimately brings the 
king and queen of unhappy France, and their chief 
supporters to a meeting with Henry Y. and his nobles. 

This is at Troyes in Champagne. The Dauphin and 
his claims are disregarded. It is here, and after these 
stirring events, that Shakespeare, in Scene 2 of Act V., 
brings us face to face with his dramatic puppets. 

It will be noticed that he passes over all allusion to 
the death of the elder Burgundy and carries on the 
story as though he were dealing with the personage of 
that name who figures in previous acts. It is, how- 
ever, with his son Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy 
we have now to do. There is a marriage in the air and 
peace in prospect. Henry demands his terms like a 
merchant, and insists upon them like a usurer. He 
listens to Burgundy's pathetic picture of poor France 
"losing both beauty and utility," and replies with the 
assurance of one who holds the cards of fate : 

If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace 
Whose want gives growth to the imperfections 
Which you have cited, you must buy that peace 
With full accord to all our just demands.' 

With these terms and just demands we are already 
familiar. Henry abates no jot or tittle of the claims for 

J Act v., Scene 2. 



CHARACTER OF HENRY. 161 

which he had " let loose the dogs of war." First, he 
will have Katharine to his wife. Second, he will be 
regent of the kingdom of France during the king's life ; 
and third, he will receive the crown as his own upon 
the king's decease. This was the famous treaty of 
Trojes. The legal heir to the throne is entirely 
ignored. Henry is espoused to the fair Princess Kath- 
arine after a soldierly wooing, and the play ends with 
Henry's " prepare we for our marriage." 

Surely Shakespeare, in his devotion to the character 
of Henry Y., could not have selected a more brilliant 
ending for the life with which he has dealt in three 
successive plays. With all France his heritage, and 
all England his o^vn, with a patriotic people who saw 
in him a fitting successor to the Black Prince, whose 
Cressy had been fairly outdone by Agincourt ; with 
the gratified ambition of a soldier's life on his head as 
a crown, and a beautiful wife by his side as a helpmeet, 
the poet leaves, we cannot but believe regretfully, this 
chiefest and best beloved of all the children of his 
brain. 

This character of Henry, now dramatically com- 
pleted, deserves close study. Both as an artistic con- 
ception and as an interesting personality it must re- 
ceive the palm over all the purely historic characters, 
and rank well up with those notable personages of 
tragedy to whom the genius of Shakespeare has lent 
their most transcendent lustre. We have noted, stage 
by stage, the gradual steps in the evolution of Henry's 
remarkable character. It is often observed that he 
was Shakespeare's favorite, and frequently claimed 
that the poet makes the gaUant king the mouth-piece 
11 



162 WOOING OF KATHARINE. 



\ 



of his own soul's meditation. That there is a general 
likeness is manifest. Both poet and prince spent an 
idle youth, at the same time nourishing the germs of a 
nobler manhood. Both were acquainted with taverns, 
and it is quite probable that wild Prince Hal borrowed 
his inns and roisterings, and acquaintance with low and 
wild phases of town life from the actor-author whose 
genius thus coined even his hours of idleness into gold. 
But here all likeness ends. One may read into the 
speeches of a great many of the poet's creations the 
sentiments of his own heart. Why Henry should be 
selected as their especial channel it is hard to see. I 
believe it may arise from a desire to feel better ac- 
quainted with Shakespeare himself. The details of 
his personal life are so meagre that anything which 
^can possibly throw light upon it is eagerly welcomed. 

The wdsh is father to the thought both in this char- 
acter, and in the ever-recurring discussion of the auto- 
biographical character of the Sonnets. 

We have seen Henry V. in all guises. He runs the 
gamut of all phases of a lad bred to fortune and to 
place. In all these manifestations we see something 
to admire, and from stage to stage of his development 
w^e trace the origin of each succeeding step. 

It is as a lover only that, upon cool examination, he 
disappoints. He woos as Hotspur would have wooed. 
There is a lack of coherency in the character here. 
He is rou"h and uncouth. He rides rouejh-shod over 
a road he knows must lead to victory, because Katha- 
rine is one of the terms of his truce and treaty with 
her father. Although he asks, and even begs for con- 
sideration, there is a subtle laugh back of his pleading 



BEASONS FOE HENRY'S CAMPAIGN. 163 

which he seems to enjoy as a huge jest. Katharine, 
from what little we see of her, is worth knowing better. 
She is charming, with her quaint old French and her 
broken and sometimes wilfully mistaken English. 
Her mother is a dignified figure-head, who plays her 
daughter's charms against a lover's supposed distrac- 
tion, in order to gain a point in statecraft. 

To return to the king and the question involved 
in his prosecution of the claims for the French crown. 
The high moral tone which Shakespeare adopts in set- 
ting forth this claim ; the assumption of Henry that it 
was for France's sake that he made these campaigns, 
is not borne out by the history, nor does Shakespeare, 
who is in the main faithful to the historic facts, suc- 
ceed in maintaining it. It is on the very surface of 
this play that the young king, in order to prevent 
discussions over what some great nobles contended 
was his dubious title to his own crown, sets up a pre- 
posterous claim to the crown of a neighboring king- 
dom. For the greater glory of the English name an 
army is readily assembled for the purpose of maintain- 
ing this claim, in which the king is assisted by a clergy 
who fear too close an investigation into their own af- 
fairs. 

An accidental battle occurring, during what was 
practically a retreat from a costly victory, throws the 
game entirely into his hands. With Agincourt back 
of him he dictates his own terms to a kingdom torn 
by internal dissension and ruled by a lunatic. He 
names his price for peace. Katharine as a bride, and 
the reversion of the French crown as an heritage. 

This is all well done for the times, and Henry is 



164 ENGLAND'S IDEAL KING. 

even conspicuously in advance of the semi-barbaric 
liabits of his day in many of the customs of warfare, as 
noticeably in the order to his troops to abstain from 
pillage on the enemy's soil. But, after all, the French 
campaign was bad policy. Henry was a type of the 
prevailing English idea of glory, far more than if, in 
that day, he had won Ireland and Scotland and made 
them integral portions of an homogeneous empire. 
The English were but slowly to learn that their real 
strength lay not in foreign conquest, but in domestic 
prosperity. These wars were costly, although they 
made trade active and commerce thrive. Heine's 
bitter criticism we cannot accept entirely, although 
we may see the grain of truth under the cj^nic critic's 
chaff: " In truth," he says, "in those wars the Eng- 
lish had neither justice nor poetry. For they partly 
concealed the coarsest spirit of robbery under worth- 
less claims of succession ; and in part made war as 
mean mercenaries, in the vulgar interests of mean 
merchants or shopmen." 

But whatever the view of the modern student the 
English people rejoiced in Henry Y, 

They went wild with enthusiasm over Agincourt. 
The gay prince, for whom in his wildest days the peo- 
ple had a fondness, had justified himself, and spoiled 
the expectations of his enemies. And Shakespeare 
ends his play at just that point in his hero's career 
when there could be no regrets for his past, and the 
brightest hopes of greater glor}^ for his future. 

England had had her days of gloom, and was des- 
tined, as the result of these very famous victories, to 
have days of still deeper misery ; but over the mar- 



CONCLUSION. 165 

riage of Henry and Katharine, there were no shadows. 
No birds of evil omen perched above the broad pennon 
of the warrior king. All voices joined in shouts of 
Te Deum Laudamus, and the poet sings his song of 
triumph clear and brilliantly, without a false note or 
jarring harmony, to the last bar, and, in spite of his 
own words, with no " rough and all unable pen," 

Our bending author hath pursued the story. 
In little room confining mighty men.' 

' Chorus ending Act V. 



HENRY VL 

THREE PARTS. 

There is no known " foundation play " for Part I., the 
material for which is gathered from Hall's Chronicle. 

For Parts II. and III. there are alleged to be origi- 
nals, viz.: The First part of the Contention betwixt 
the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster, with 
the death of the good Duke Humphrey ; and the 
Banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolk, and the 
Tragicall end of the proud Cardinal of Winchester, with 
the notable Rebellion of Jacke Cade, and the Duke of 
York's first claim unto the Crowne. London 1594. 
And, the True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and 
the deathe of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the 
whole Contention of the two houses, Lancaster and 
Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted, etc. 

Some of the critics hold (a) that Shakespeare wrote 
these original plays and afterward rewrote them in 
the form preserved to us through the First Folio, (b) 
That Shakespeare had nothing to do with them except 
to use them as he used other plays, for raw material. 
(c) That the two plays are surreptitious and therefore 
imperfect copies of the Shakespeare originals. Either 
theory is plausible ; neither is certain. 

Dates of Shakespeare's plays 1592-94. 

They are not mentioned by Meres, and first appear 
in their present form in the First Folio. 



I 



CHEONOLOGY OF HENRY VI. 

1422, Henry V. buried in "Westminster Abbey, Henry VI, an 
infant. Duke of Gloucester (king's uncle) made Protector. 
Charles VI. of France dies (October). Duke of Bedford made 
regent (for Henry) over France. Duke of Burgundy main- 
tains the English alliance. The son of Charles VI. crowned 
King of France at Poitiers, as Charles VII., in defiance of the 
treaty of Troyes. 

1423. Battles of Crevant and Vermueil. French defeated. 
1428-29. English siege of Orleans raised by Joan of Arc. 

1429. Battle of Patay. Great defeat of the English. Charles 
VII. crowned King of France at Rheims. 

1430. Henry VI, crowned King of France at Paris. 

1430-31. Joan of Arc taken prisoner, tried and executed for 
sorcery. 

1432. Burgundy deserts the English alliance. 

1435. Death of the regent Bedford. Decline of English power 
in France. 

1440. Arraignment of Eleanor Cobham (wife of the Protector 
Gloucester) for sorcery. 

1445. Truce with France, Marriage of Henry VI, with Mar- 
garet of Anjou. Cession of French provinces to Charles VII,, 
causes dissatisfaction in England, 

1447. Murder of Duke of Gloucester. Death of Cardinal 
Beaufort. Henry VI. under the influence of Queen Margaret 
and her favorite the Duke of Suffolk, 

1450. English practically lose all foothold in France. Inter- 
nal dissensions in England. Banishment and violent death 
of Suffolk, the queen's favorite. Insurrection throughout 
England. Jack Cade's rebellion. His rise, temporary suc- 
cesses, defeat and death, 

1452. Overt beginning of the wars of the Roses in the fac- 



168 CHEONOLOQY OF IIENliY VI. 

tional strifes between the Duke of York and the Lancastrian 
Duke of Somerset. 

1454. During King Henry's serious illness York made Pro- 
tector. 

1455. First battle of St. Albans. Not an act ostensibly against 
the crown on the part of the Duke of York, but factional 
between the interests of York and Somerset. York victori- 
ous. York makes pretensions to the crown, by right of 
descent from the third son of Edward III. 

1460. An act of Parliament declares York the true heir to the 
crown after Henry VI., ignoring the claim of Henry's son by 
Margaret of Anjou. Battle of Wakefield (December). Defeat 
and death of York, whose son Edward (afterward Edward IV.) 
succeeds to his claim. 

1461. Victory of Yorkists at Mortimer's Cross (January). 
Battle of St. Albans, defeat of Yorkists (February). In spite 
of this Edward proceeds to London, is welcomed by the 
people, and assumes the crown as Edward IV. (March). 
Battle of Towton (March 30). Great victory for the York- 
ists. Henry VI. flies to Scotland, and Margaret to France. 

1464. Alliance between Margaret and France. Battle of Hex- 
ham. Lancastrians again defeated. Henry imprisoned in 
the Tower. Marriage of Edward IV. with Lady Elizabeth 
Grey. Estrangement of Warwick from the Yorkist cause. 

1469. Marriage of George, Duke of Clarence, the king's brother, 
with Isabel, daughter of Warwick. 

1470. Warwick and Clarence, driven out of England by the 
king's jealousy, ally themselves with Margaret of Aujou and 
the Lancastrians. 

1470. October 6, Edward IV. driven from the throne, and 
Henry VI. restored as the result of this alliance. 

1471. Edward IV. returns to England. Battle of Baruet and 
death of Warwick. Battle of Tewkesbury and final defeat of 
the Lancastrians. Death of Henry VI. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

HENRY VI. —THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 

Authenticity of this play, especially Part I.— Vital connection between the 
three Parts. — Historic centres of action as noted in the three divisions. 
— Part I. : French wars and episode of Joan of Arc. — Part H. : 
Civil dissensions and Jack Cade's rebellion.— Part III. : Warwick, 
the ''King-maker," and triumph of House of York.— Confusion of de- 
tails in the play as in the chronicles.— England's song of triumph 
turned into a wail of woe.— The dauphin crowned, and France, miis 
Burgundy, renounces English rule. — Siege of Orleans, and Joan of Arc's 
marvellous career.— Faction of the red and white roses.— Burgundy 
deserts the English and joins his king.— Capture of the Maid.— Her 
trial and execution. — Character and position of the Maid in romance 
and history.— Treaty of peace.— Margaret of Anjou betrothed to 
Henry of England.— Division and parties among the English nobles. 
—(a) King's party, with Suffolk as prime favorite.— (b) Gloucester, 
the Protector, a patriot, resenting the French treaty. — (c) Somerset, 
and Buckingham, representing the selfish opposition to the king.— 
(d) The Yorkist party, and Warwick's ambition.— Warwick holds the 
key to the situation.— Cabals of Gloucester's enemies.— His wife's am- 
bition. — Her arrest for sorcery, and penance — Y'"ork's title to the 
throne advanced. — Jack Cade's rebellion. — Fifteenth-century socialism. 
— Cade's progress and defeat. — The Wars of the Roses in full fury. — 
The first agreement.— Henry to be succeeded by York. — Margaret goes 
to war for her son, ignoring Henry, who becomes a shuttlecock be- 
tween two or three parties. — Margaret's victory. — The horrors of civil 
war. — York dies and his claims taken up by Edward, his son (after- 
ward Edward IV.). — Edward on the throne —Margaret a suppliant at 
the French court. — Warwick appears for Edward. — News out of Eng- 
land — Warwick's wrath at Edward's slight treatment. — Margaret and 
Warwick strike a treaty, and with help from Louis set forth to de- 
pose Edward. — The combined forces defeat Edward temporarily and 
restore Henry.— Battle of Barnet and death of the " King-maker."— 
Tewkesbury and the downfall of the Lancastrian cause. — Imprison- 
ment and exile of ^Margaret. — Edward IV. reigns undisputed. — The 
anti- French spirit of Shakespeare. 

The reign of Henry VI. forms the most confused 
part of English history after the clays of legend and 
tradition that mark Anglo-Saxondom. All writers are 



170 AUTHENTICITY OF PART I. 

uncertain and all students puzzled. Shakespeare, 
both as writer and student, appears to have shared in 
these historical perplexities, and his contribution to a 
knowledge of the times is as far from accuracy as to 
details, as it is faithful, on the whole, to the general 
character of the age. 

The first part of the play has few friends for its 
Shakespearean authorship. But if he is ilot the author 
of this as well as of Parts II. and III., there are reasons 
for inferring that he is at least the editor or adapter, 
to as great an extent as may be claimed for him, in the 
play of King John. These reasons are : 

First, The significance of the last Chorus of Henry 
v., in which the events of this Part I. are indicated 
after the same fashion as the Chorus is employed 
throughout that play. 

Second, The introduction of the dead King Henry at 
its beginning, and the historical and dramatic connec- 
tion thus established with the preceding play. 

Third, The anti -French spirit of this Part, in har- 
mony with Shakespeare's method and custom through- 
out the play. 

Fourth, The fact that these three Parts were alike 
attributed to Shakespeare by the editors of the First 
Folio, who were in better position to judge of the mat- 
ter, not only than the ciitics of our own day, but of 
the critics of their own day. They were Shakespeare's 
friends, managers, and business associates. Better 
than any one else in England they must have known 
what came from the poet's pen. There is a vital con- 
nection, too, between the three Parts. The foreign 
affairs of England treated in Part I., are necessary to 



HISTORIC CENTRES OF ACTION. 171 

an understanding of the domestic troubles with which 
Parts II. and III. are occupied. We conclude, there- 
fore, that for purjx)ses of historical study, at all events, 
this Part I. is necessary to Parts II. and III., and that 
in all probability the hand that penned the latter had 
a large share, at least, in the composition of the former. 

The play as a whole covers the whole reign of Henry 
YL, from the death of his father, in 1422, to his own 
death, in 11:71, and includes also a portion of the reign 
of Edw^ard IV., first king of the rival house of York. 

The three pivots around which the discordant order 
of events revolve, are marked by three names: 

I. Joan of Arc, and the loss of the French conquests 
of Henry Y. ; 11. Jack Cade, as one of the moving 
springs of civil dissension ; and III. Waricivh the Kincj- 
maher, the last of the gTeat barons, who in his own 
powerful person revived for a time the fading glory of 
Feudalism, and with whose death at Barnet it expired 
forever. 

It is in vain that w^e attempt to unravel the anachron- 
isms in these plays. For dates and accurate notation 
any English history may be read. It is our place and 
purpose only to show how brilliantly the poet illus- 
trates the spirit of the age he treats, although often 
at the expense of the letter of history. One should not 
read Shakespeare for the history, but having read the 
history Shakespeare seems to make us understand it 
the better. The author of the popular history of the 
English people pays this tribute to the poet anent the 
period W' e have now in hand : " It is a story Avell known 
to the English people, for it has been told in the dra- 
matic fcMrm by a great historical teacher. History, 



172 EARLY TEARS OF HENRY VI. 

strictly so called, the history derived from Rolls and 
Statutes, must ' pale its ineffectual fire ' in the sunlight 
of the poet." 

In the opening scene of the play we catch the 
muffled sound of a dead march rolling through the 
aisles, and rising in moaning melody to the vaulted 
roof of Westminster Abbey. The body of the hero of 
Agincourt, the conqueror of the French, lies in state. 
His son, a babe but nine months old, holds in his 
weak hands the heavy sceptre of two kingdoms. Shake- 
speare, the artist and hero-worshipper, is at his best 
in the conception, if not in the execution, of this dra- 
matic touch. England's song of triumph is turned 
into a wail of woe. 

Hung be the heavens with black, . . . 
England ne'er lost a king of so much worth. ^ 

Two short years only of undimmed glory abroad and 
at home after the treaty of Troyes, did Henry Y. en- 
joy. In these he completed the practical conquest of 
France in alliance with the Duke of Burgundy. Shortly 
after his death the feeble Charles of France also passed 
away, and under the treaty of Troyes, which we saw 
signed in the last chapter, the infant Henry YI. suc- 
ceeded, not to the regency, but to the actual crown of 
France. For a time the Duke of Bedford as regent 
easily maintained the English claim, but it was an 
unnatural state of affairs that could not last. The 
Dauphin proclaimed himself as Charles YIL, and be- 

1 Piut I., Act I., Scene 1. 



DISCONTENT OF FRANCE. 173 

gan that struggle for his hereditary throne to which 
the name of Joan of Arc lends such romance. 

The first act of Henry VI. is a forecast of the Avhole 
play. In the very lamentations of churchmen and 
nobles over the body of their late king, and growing out 
of the death of him who alive had bound all together 
by a strong hand, we hear the notes of mutual suspicion, 
and anon the clashing of factions. While Exeter and 
Gloucester boast of the glory of arms, lamenting the 
king's " brandished sword," and "arms spread wider 
than a dragon's wings," the Bishop of Winchester de- 
clares : " The church's prayers made him so prosper- 
ous." To which the soldier returns a cutting retort. 
Bedford, who was regent of France, as the proper dra- 
matic mouth-piece, is forced to cry : " Cease, cease these 
jars and rest your mind in peace." Then follows mes- 
senger after messenger from France bringing the intel- 
ligence which for the first few years of Henry VI. 's 
minority was wafted with every wind across the Chan- 
nel from French fields to English ears. The Dauphin 
was proving himself the worthy descendant of a long 
line of kings. The people of France who had yielded 
to the prowess of a great soldier and gallant prince, 
the husband, moreover, of their own fair princess, Kath- 
arine, irked under a foreign yoke when held in place by 
a babe in arms. They began to renounce the EngHsh 
domination and to return to their natural allegiance. 

Burgundy could not control all France for England, 
although for a time he fought alongside of the succes- 
sors-in-arms of the English prince to whom he had 
sworn fealty. 

And Bedford had been at first successful. He had 



17:1: ENGLISH RULE. 

pushed the English pennon into many a corner of 
France where the fleur-de-lis alone had waved for 
sovereignty. He was hampered in his movements at 
first by a quarrel between the Duke of Gloucester and 
the Duke of Burgundy. But this settled, and with 
Burgundy once more to aid him, he pursued his ag- 
gressive policy, and sat down with ten thousand troops 
before Orleans. 

Charles YII. was at his wit's end to retain the city. 
He was so weakened that he could not move. France, 
from gradually beginning to take heart of hope, was 
almost in despair for means to combat the English and 
Burgundian allies. What should be done ? The an- 
swer came from a quarter as remote as unexpected. 

The peasantry of France suffered as no other class 
from the unnatural divisions of her great nobles and 
the strides of horrid war. Within the heart of tlie 
common people lay shame and sorrow over the English 
rule and the Burgundian alliance. The words of the 
Maid of Orleans to the duke, when persuading him to 
forsake the enemies of his country and cast in his lot 
where both patriotism and piety beckoned him, fairly, 
and with no exaggeration, expressed the mind of the 
people upon whom lay the burden, and in whose sides 
were the wounds of war, while they had none of the 
glory that attended camps and courts. 

Look on thy coiuitry, look on fertile France, 
And see tlie cities and the towns defaced 
By wasting ruin of the cruel foe ; 
As looks the mother on her lovely babe 
When death doth close her tender dying eyes. 
See, see, the pining malady of France, 



JOAN OF ARC. 175 

Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds 
Which thou thyself hath given her woeful breast. 
O, turn thy edged sword another way, 
Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help.^ 

So tlioiiglit and felt, doubtless, the mass of the French 
people. In the countryside lived a simple maid who 
*' saw visions and dreamed dreams." She felt the 
shock and saw the miseries of war. Her soul was in 
arms for her country. What could she do, a child, the 
daughter of a shepherd, without credit, without inter- 
est. What she did do is one of the marvels of history. 
It is the greatest of all pities that Shakespeare read his 
chronicles too closely, and in this instance especially, 
transferred from their naturally biased pages, a picture 
of Joan of Arc, so grossly untrue and unfair, that one 
is reconciled to the theory that he did not conceive the 
Joan of his drama, and perhaps even softened down 
the ruder strokes of another brush. The genius Avhich 
could analyze the grief of Constance, open the infinite 
depths of a woman's heart as in Katharine of Aragon, 
and exploit the shining tenderness of Portia, could ap- 
parently see nothing in the mission of Joan of Arc, 
save what he caught through the naiTOw and distorted 
view of insular prejudice and the hateful anger of a 
people against a despised but victorious foe. In the 
Avhole treatment of Joan there is little to indicate her 
true historic character. She came up from her village 
and sought her king. Despised at first, the supersti-' 
tions of the age finally gained her a hearing. At the 
head of an army she relieves Orleans. At the head of 
another she leads the Dauphin to Kheims where he is 

1 Parti., Act III, Scene:]. 



176 DEATH OF JOAN. 

crowned and anointed King of France. Then she 
would withdraw, but her name had become an inspira- 
tion to the army, and the king holds her to his service. 
The haps of war varied now. The Dul^e of Burgundy 
pursued some small successes against Charles, but Joan 
had revealed to the king and people of France their 
own strength. The contest is a stubborn one. In the 
midst of it, and while on the whole favorable to France, 
the Maid of Orleans is taken prisoner by a band of 
partisans ; is sold to Burgundy ; is sold by him in tui-n 
to the English, and by the English, after a year's im- 
prisonment, tried and condemned for sorcery, is burned 
at the stake, while an English cardinal stands by con- 
senting to the shameful act. History has crowned her 
with the crown of martyrdom. " We have burned a 
saint," cried out one of the soldiers who stood about 
the burning stake. And still her place in history is 
not a settled one.^ Note now, as worth study, the 
character-drawing of the English poet. 

In her introduction to Charles of France, she is made 
to assume an arrogant and boastful tone, even as re- 
gards her personal appearance, totally at variance with 
the modest faith of one who believed herself inspired 
of God to do her country service. Of the ^vision of the 
Yirgin, Joan says : 

lu complete glory she revealed herself, 
And whereas I was black and swart before, 
With those clear rays which she infused on me, 
That beauty am I blessed with which yon see. 
Ask me what question thou canst possible 
And I will answer unpremeditated : 

1 The Church of Rome has but recently canonized her. 



ENGLISH JUDGMENT OF JOAN. 177 

My courage try by combat, if tliou dar'st, 
And thou shalt fiud that I exceed my sex. 
Eesolve ou this, thou shalt be fortunate 
If thou receive me for thy warlike mate.' 

And again she is made to boast : 

Now am I like that proud insulting ship 
Which Csesar and his fortunes bare at once.^ 

The English were taught to look upon the maid as a 
witch ; no difficult matter in those times, and for some 
generations later. Shakespeare expresses this feeling, 
which undoubtedly laid fast hold upon the imagination 
of the soldiery, officers and men alike, in Talbot's sav- 
age apostroj)he : 

Here, here she comes, I'll have a bout with thee, 
Devil, or devil's dam, I'll conjure thee ! 
Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch, 
And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv'st.^ 

And tlie Duke of Bedford, regent and general in chief 
of the English troops, thus speaks concerning Charles, 
the French prince, whom Joan crowned at Eheims : 

Coward of France, how much he wrongs his fame, 

Despising his own arms' fortitude, 

To join with witches, and the heli3 of hell.^ 

There is a contemptible assumption all through the 
play, also, that the Maid was not pure in her honor. 
Scene Fourth of the Fifth Act, in which she is made 
to confess the shamefullest of all shameful things for 

' Part I., Act I. , Scene 3. « Ibid. 

? Part I. , Act I., Scene 5. ^ Pait I.. Act II.. Scene 1. 

13 



178 SHAKE^^FEAliE'S FAUTISANSHIP. 

woman's lips, is a brazen violation both of decency 
and of historic truth. But we can fancy the pit of 
an Elizabethan theatre ringing with applause at the 
atrocious falsehoods. 

The scene ^ in which the Maid has an interview with 
fiends, in which even they, familiar spirits of darkness, 
forsake her, is a fitting prelude to the language she is 
made to use concerning both her allies and her ene- 
mies, after she is taken prisoner. 

The Duke of York makes an insulting speech con- 
cerning her and the French prince which Avould have 
turned the real Maid speechless with shame and pale 
with horror ; the poet's Joan answers in kind : 

Puc. A plaguing mischief light on Charles and thee, 
And may ye both be suddenly surprised 
By bloody hands in sleeping on your beds. 

York. Fell, banning hag. Enchantress hold thy tongue. 

Piic. I prithee give me leave to curse awhile.^ 

Now this is not the Joan of Arc of history nor of poetry. 
It is an English tradition above which apparently the 
dramatist could not rise on account of his audience. 

We must not suppose, however, that Shakespeare is 
without apologists for his treatment of the Maid of 
Orleans. 

Charles Knight, who speaks with authority, declares 
that the poet idealizes the character from wdiat is found 
in the chronicles concerning her. And up to the scene 
already alluded to, when she makes the inconsistent and 
contradictory assertions about her honor, Knight calmly 
alleges, " But in all previous scenes Shakespeare has 

1 Part I., Act v., Scene 3. '^ Part I., Act V., Scene 3. 



KNIGHT'S APOLOGY. 179 

drawn tlie character of the Maid with an undisguised 
sympathy for her courage, her patriotism, her high in- 
tellect, and her enthusiasm. If she had been the de- 
fender of England and not of France, the poet could 
not have invested her with higher attributes." ^ 

Knight's rapturous admiration is buttressed by one 
argument as follows : 

" Neither the patriotism nor the superstition of 
Shakespeare's age would have endured that the Pucelle 
should have been dismissed from the scene, without 
vengeance taken on imagined crimes, or that confession 
should not be made by her which should exculpate the 
authors of her death. Shakespeare has conducted her 
history up to the point where she is handed over to the 
stake. Other writers would have burned her upon the 
scene." ^ 

This is a refinement of distinction without difference 
which seems to me to have few equals as a bit of spe- 
cial pleading. Her honor is stabbed, her modesty tra- 
vestied, her humility veneered, her firm faith in God as 
her inspiration turned into an incantation scene with 
fiends, and because to this is not added that she is lit- 
erally burnt at the stake on the scenic stage, we are to 
believe that the English poet was above and beyond 
the harsh spirit of his age in the delicacy with which 
he treats her di-amatic career. 

Again Mr. Knight says, in extenuation of his adora- 
tion of Shakespeare, " It is in her mouth (Joan's) that 
he puts his choicest thoughts and most musical verse."^ 
But surely this is not a legitimate deduction. He puts 

1 Knight's Studies of Shakespeare, Bk. IV., Ch. 4, on Henry VI. 

2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 



N 



180 • HENRY VI. iJROWNED. 

in the mouth of one of the basest of English kings that 
fine outburst against the usurped authority of Eome, 
beginning : 

What earthly name to interrogatories 
Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 

The same king gave away the crown and honor of Eng- 
land to the pope, and received it back as a fief of the 
Holy See. Shakespeare's estimate of Joan's character 
must be found in her own words concerning herself, 
her mission, and her deeds. And judged by that 
standard we fail to find a basis for Knight's laudatory 
comment. The real reason was, as we have already 
noted, the state of the English mind, the demands of 
the patrons of the theatre, and the evident purpose of 
Shakespeare to put upon the stage, plays that would 
fire the English heart with enthusiasm, and draw shil- 
lings from the English, purse. This is not a hard view 
to take if we look upon Shakespeare as a man ; if we 
conceive of him as a demigod who could do no weak 
or faulty thing, the criticism, of course, falls to the 
gromid. 

We pass over hastily the other points treated in this 
section of the three-part drama of Henr^ VI. 

Burgundy finally deserted his English allies, al- 
though not as in the play, at the interposLfcion of Joan 
of Arc. 

The infant Henry YI. was crowned in Paris, but it 
was an empty ceremony. France had risen in her 
mighty wrath, and shook the invaders one by one from 
her soil. The glory of Agincourt faded away. . The 
English possessions were reduced to Normandy, a por- 



ENGLAND'S HUMILIATION. 181 

tion of Anjoii, and Maine. Fourteen years after Joan 
of Arc was burned at the stake, her work was all but 
accomplished. Kene, Duke of Anjou, gave his daughter 
Margaret in marriage to the young Henry YI., and in 
return received a cession of the two provinces, Anjou 
and Maine, which were, as is said in the play, the keys 
to Normandy. This was with the advice and consent 
of Charles VII. A sortie now and then, after this, was 
made upon French soil by English troops ; but in 1453, 
of the brilliant conquests of Edward III. and the 
Black Prince, and of the "famous victories" that 
followed Henry V., and the " honorable battle of Agin- 
court," there was but one remnant left to grace English 
arms, and the little town and fortress of Calais was the 
sole reward for all those costly wars. England was' 
humiliated and felt her humiliation. But she was 
slowly learning the lesson, which one of the chief 
events of the despised King John's reign should have 
taught her, the lesson Shakespeare was patiently teach- 
ing that Elizabethan England, which had its di'eams 
of foreign conquest too. 

With the dimming of the fleur-de-lis on the fair 
pattern of England's royal robe arose civil dissensions, 
due partly to the popular rage against the administra- 
tion of affairs Avhich had lost France ; partly to the 
muttering's of socialism against Church and State, and 
partly to the quarrel, now coming to a head, of the rival 
hbuses of York and Lancaster for the throne. In 
our treatment of the French wars we have dealt mainly 
with the course of English policy abroad. That, as 
we have seen, ended in the loss of all that had been 
won to the gi^eater glory of the English name by 



182 DISSENSIONS IN ENGLAND. 

Henry V. This was not due wholly to the inspired 
bravery of a village maiden, the valor of French arms, 
or the weakness of the English generals. Bedford and 
Talbot, especially the latter, were names to conjure 
with as warriors in England and France for many 
years. With reference to the First Part of Henry YI.,^ 
possibly the poet Nash wrote in his " Pierce Penni- 
less," date of 1592, " How it would have joyed brave 
Talbot, terror of the French, to think that after he had 
lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should tri- 
umph again on the stage, and have his bones new em- 
balmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at 
least (at several times) who in the tragedian that rep- 
resents his person, imagine they behold him fresh 
bleeding." 

If Talbot and his companions - in - arms had been 
properly supported at home, it is possible that the 
song of triumph and the wail of woe had not been so 
close together. But there were dissensions within the 
English court resulting from the struggle for posses- 
sion of the young king, and the prestige of power that 
went with his person. At the outset of the play one 
of the messengers who brings bad tidings from France, 

says : 

Amongst tlie soldiers there is muttered 

That here you maintain several factions, 

And whilst a field should be despatched and fought, 

You are disputing of your generals.- 

This was too true. Passing over for the most part 
the internal history of England during the progress of 
the French disasters, above recorded, we note one 

1 Act IV., Scene 7. ^ Part I., Act L, Scene 1. 



THE TEMPLE GARDEN. 183 

phase of these home disputes, before takmg up the 
state of affah's at the openmg of Part II. 

While "cropped are the flower-de-luces in their 
arms," the buds of the white and red roses, are open- 
ing among the nobility into the blossoms of ciyil war. 
For that scene ^ in the Temple Garden, where over 
"some nice sharp quillet of the law," the cause of 
the Yorkist branch of the house of Plantagenet is 
espoused by the farseeing and ambitious Warwick, 
there is no known historic basis. How,^ when, or 
where the roses were assumed as party badges is not 
known. ,Probabfy it was an accident. The causes of 
the roses lay in English history. When Eichard II. 
threw his warder down, first banished, and then seized 
the estates of Bolingbroke, making a clear way for that 
usurping sovereign, the possibility of civil strife over 
the title lay in the existence of a child, the legal heir 
before Bolingbroke, to the throne. It was prophesied 
then, and Warwick, in the spirit of that proj)hecy, de- 
clares in the Temple Garden : 

This brawl to-day, 
""Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden, 
Shall send between the red rose and the white, 
A thousand souls to death and deadly night. '-^ 

In Act II., Scene 2, the scene between Mortimer 
and his nephew Plantagenet (soon to be made Duke 
of York) is contained the historical argument which 
we have been tracing in these chapters.^ In a few 
words, we may indicate exactly the position of the 
hostile families. The Kichard Plantagenet, afterward 

1 Part I. , Act II. , Scene 4. 2 ibid. 

'^ See Appendix, p. 307. 



184 CLAIMS OF RIVAL HOUSES. 

Duke of York, of this pk\y, is the lineal Yorkist heir to 
the English throne, through the third son of Edward 
III. Henry YI. is the Lancastrian occupant of the 
throne, tracing his lineage to the fourth son of Edward 
III. Lancaster has three unbroken reigns in succes- 
sion, and the strong claim of possession. York has un- 
doubted right to the title by strict law of primogeni- 
ture. Warwick throws liimseH now upon the side of 
the Yorkist family and wears the Avhite rose. To fight 
this brawl out means more than to continue a quarrel 
over some quillet of the law begun in the Temple 
Garden. The great mass of the people who took part 
in these civil wars were not learned in questions of 
primogeniture and what constituted a legal title to the 
crown of England. They fought for the red rose or 
the white. They looked for fighting orders to their 
captains. A whole generation grew up while the 
hideous wars were in progress. Act II. of Part II. of 
the play gives* a vivid picture of what the fancifully 
named strife actually meant in the homes of those who 
supported this or that king on . the throne. But the 
nobles knew for what they were fighting. The house 
of York was makiiig a desperate effort for' a great 
crown ; the Yorkists were for the spoils of the crown. 
The house of Lancaster, after a brilliant career of 
three reigns, was on the Avane, and was putting forth 
every effort, not so much to revive its former glory as 
to maintain its present place secure. 

There were good and bad on both sides. Humble 
men and- ambitious men faced each other on the battle- 
field and lay down together in the camp. But all the 
time the sun of ^Lancaster was setting, and that of 



FOUR COURT FACTIONS. - ^185 

York rising. Warwick, who was the English states- 
man of his day, sagaciously cast in his fortunes with 
the Yorkist house. 

To return now to the opening of the Second Part, 
and the state of affairs in England at the time it 
marked. Out of the mystifications and confusions of 
the chronicles we draw the threads of at least four 
distinct factions. 

The hiwjs ixirty, of w^iich Suffolk was head and 
prime favorite with Henry, owing to the successful issue 
of his efforts for the imion of the king with Margaret 
of Anjou. Cardinal Beaufort's interest lies here also. 

Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey, who was pro- 
tector of the realm during Henry's minority, a genuine 
patriot, head of the war party, and deeply resenting 
the treaty with France, of which Margaret had been 
the price. 

Somerset and Bucl'im/ham, representing the selfish 
opposition to Gloucester and the king, enyious and hot 
against the protector, and fearing Cardinal Beaufort, 
as deep schemers fear those Avho rival them in craft. 
Somerset saj's : 

Cousin of Bnckingham, though Humphrey's pride,' 

And. greatness of his x^lace, he grief to lis, 

Yet let us watch the haughty cardinal ; 

His insolence is more intolerable 

Than all the princes in the land beside ; 

If Gloucester be displaced he'll be protector.' . 

The fourth faction was that of the BuJce of York, with 
whom was allied Warwick, whose policy it was to fo- 
ment disturbances, and fire the embers of discontent 

1 Part 11., Act I., Scene 1. 



186 WEAKNESS OF HENRY VL 

already heaped up in great quantity, in order that 
every advantage might be taken against the Lancastrian 
occupant of the throne. 

All these parties, with perhaps the exception of 
Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey, were seeking 
their own advancement in the name, but with little 
reference to the rights of, the king. And Henry YI. 
was not the man for such rude times. A parallel is 
often traced between him and Richard II. There is 
a certain weakness, effeminacy in its least pleasant 
sense, in both characters. But in Richard it came from 
moral cowardice. He could not bear to face trouble. 
In Henry it resulted from overstrained piety. He 
could not bear the sight or knowledge of any wrong 
going on about him. Evil unmanned him. Simple- 
minded as a child, he trusted those about him without 
a shadow of doubt as to their perfect faith and honor. 
He had not a drop of the soldier blood in his veins, nor 
a spark of the warlike spirit in his soul. He was a 
strange son of such a pair as Henry Y. and Katharine. 
Yet this was the prince in whose hand was borne the 
pennon of a falling house. Even about his marriage he 
does not seem to care deeply. 

" I shall be well content," lie says, " with any choice 
Tends to God's glory and my conntry's weal." ' 

But it was this marriage which saved his crown for 
many years. Margaret of Anjou was the complement 
of Henry YI. Had she possessed his sweet sincerity 
and humble piety she would have been a model queen ; 
Had he possessed her virile and resolute courage he 

1 Part I,, Act v., Scene 1. 



i 



GLOUCESTER'S LOYALTY. 1S7 

would have been a model king. As it was, Margaret 
of Anjou supplied the place of a man at the head of 
the house of Lancaster ; and to her alone was due the 
prolonged struggle between the white rose and the 
red. When a victory for Henry's army is spoken of, 
it is always Margaret who is in the field ; and it is 
Margaret who again and again, in spite of Warwick at 
first, and afterward in alliance Avith him, lifts Henry 
from a state of humiliation in which he meekly and 
contentedly rests, to an uncertain triumph, for which 
he does not care. 

Gloucester, as protector of the realm, and the least 
selfish of all the nobles, is the chief object of attacks 
and cabals on the part of these court factions. War- 
wick, as the most powerful and richest among the aris- 
tocracy, with the reputation of feeding thirty thou- 
sand people daily at his board in times of revelry, holds 
the key of the situation. That is, men and money were 
the forces that carried most weight in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and Warwick had both in excess of his fellows. 

Gloucester is the centre of attack, because his posi- 
tive influence at court is for the prosecution of the 
French war, and the reviving of the glory of English 
arms. Moreover, he is loyal to the king, and, to an ex- 
tent, influential with him. As he reads over the French 
treaty, in which the conquests of the idolized Henry 
V. are ceded one by one to the Duke of Anjou, his fal- 
tering accent echoes a good portion of the national feel- 
ing outside of the court circle. 

Pardon me, gracious lord, 
Some sudden qualm has struck me at the heart. 
And dimmed mine eyes that I can read no further. 



188 .' ELEANOR COBHAM. 

" Shall Henry's conquest;" he cries to the nobles, 

Bedford's vigilance, 
Your deeds of war, and all our counsel die ? 
O peers of England, shameful is this league, 
Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame. 
Blotting your names from books of memory.' 

But the good Duke's words were of no avail. The ma- 
jority seem to agree in his sentiments, but thirst for 
his removal. 

The first three Acts of Part II. are taken up with the 
plots and scheming against the protector, of which 
plots and schemes Beaufort and Somerset are chief 
movers. He was first struck through his wife, known 
in history as Eleanor Cobham, of doubtful memory. 
That she was ambitious, a good hater, and determined 
to secure and maintain a lofty position at court we 
know from history, and her husband's warning to her 
indicates the part she had in his downfall : 

O Nell, sweet Nell, if thou dost love thy lord 
Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts ; 
And may that thought, when I imagine ill 
Against my king and nephew, virtuous Henry, 
Be my last breathing in this mortal world.*^ 

For Eleanor Cobham would have had him put forth his 
hand and reach at the glorious gold of Henry's diadem. 
She seeks the aid of witch and conjurer, not out of 
keeping with her age, and is finally by these means en- 
trapped. To imagine the death of the king was trea- 
son, and to conjure evil spirits for information concern- 

1 Part II., Act I., Scene 1. 
2 Part II., Act I., Scene 2. 



PENANCE OF ELEANOR. 189 

ing such a thing was worthy of death. The king 
pronounces by poetical license the sentence : 

Stand forth, Dame Eleanor Cobliam, Gloucester's wife, 
In sight of God, and us, your fault is great, 
Receive the sentence of the law for sins 
Such as by God's book are adjudged to death. 
You four [addressing her confederates] from hence 

to prison back again ; 
From thence unto the place of execution : 
The witch in Smithfield shall be burned to ashes, 
And you three shall be strangled on the gallows. 
You, madam, for you are more nobly born, 
Shall, after three days' open j^enance done. 
Live, in your country here, in banishment. 
With Sir John Stanley in the Isle of Man.^ 

Scene 4th of Act II. gives the pathetic pictui'e of the 
penance. From a certain horror against the vain, cold 
woman, we grow under the spell of poetic genius to 
have a feeling of deepest pity and sorrow for her. It 
is one of the most touching scenes in all these plays. 
Eobed in a white sheet, her feet bare, and a taper 
burning in her hand, she performs her penance through 
the open streets of London, to Avhom her husband 
comes : 

Come you, my lord, to see my open shame ? 

Now dost thou penance too. Look how they gaze. 

See how the giddy multitude do point 

And nod their heads, and throw their eyes on thee. 

Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks 

And in thy closet, pent \\\), rue thy shame, 

And ban thine enemies, both thine and mine. 

1 Part II., Act II., Scenes. 



190 DEATH OF GLOUCESTER. 

But Gloucester's time soon comes, Eleanor's last words 
to the good Duke Humphrey prove true. 

For Suffolk ... 

And York, and impious Beaufort, that false priest 
Have all limed buslies to betray thy wings. ^ 

He will not believe it. Innocent of all charges save 
that of loyalty, in a coui't honeycombed with self-seek- 
ing and shrewd treason, how should he believe it? 
He is soon deprived of his honors, summoned before 
Parliament to answer charges which are best under- 
stood by his answer to them : 

I never robbed the soldiers of their pay, 
"^ Nor ever had one j)enny bribe from France, 
So help me God, as I have watched the night, 
Ay, night by night, in studying good for England. 

No ; many a pound of mine own proper store, 
Because I would not tax the needy commons, 
Have I dispersed to the garrisons 
And never asked for restitution.'* 

But proofs of innocence were not sought for on the 
part of the powerful cabal which must have the good 
Duke Humphrey out of the way. He was condemned 
for treason, and died by violence. A cloud of suspi- 
cion rests upon Suffolk, Beaufort, and Margaret. 
Warwick and his faction, holding aloof from these 
practices against Humphrey Gloucester, stand ready 
to make capital for the Yorkist cause out of them. 
Henry protests against the crime. Yet Suffolk, under 

1 Part II., Act II , Scene 4. 2 part II., Act III., Scene 1. 



POPULAR HATE ED OF SUFFOLK. 191 

the protection of Queen Margaret, resents the charge 
and keeps a high hand over his fellow and rival nobles, 
until that great force, long suffering, but mighty when 
aroused, the common people, clamors at the palace- 
gates for vengeance. 

GJoucester had been the people's friend, and they 
knew it. Suffolk had been their enemy, and they 
knew that. Doubtless they were subtly stirred up to 
the clamor point, and in this lay the connection of the 
people with the civil wars. 

For while Gloucester is the person against whom the 
court cabals must work, the Duke of Suffolk becomes 
the object of popular hatred. He and Queen Margaret 
w^ere close^ allies. He had. been prox^^ for the king in 
the royal marriage, and there were dark whispers, to 
which scenes in the play give credence, of their more 
intimate relations. 

The speech of Salisbury marks what was the feehng 
of the English masses against the noble whom they 
believed had dishonored their king : 

Dread lord, the commons send you word by me 
Unless Lord Suffolk straight be done to death 
Or banished fair England's territories, 
They will by violence tear him from ypur palace, 
And torture him by grievous lingering death. 
They say by him the good Duke Humi3hrey died. 
They say in him they fear your Highness' death. ^ 

So Suffolk was banished, and in Scene 1 of Act IV. his 
str-ange fate is told. Leaving England for exile, doubt- 
less di'eaming of a return through Margaret's influence. 



J 



Part II., Act III, Scenes. 



192 JACK GADE'8 REBELLION. 

lie was taken prisoner by an English war-ship, and dis- 
appeared forever. 

The poet deals with him more savagely, and at the 
hands of the people, to indicate apparently that the 
people were the real cause of the powerful favorite's 
overthrow. And we are at once led by this incident to 
one of the great preliminary movements and active 
agents in promoting the strife of Lancaster and York, 
in the person of Jack Cade, and the socialism of the 
fifteenth century. Jack Cade is one of the strange 
figures of romantic history, whose cause after this lapse 
of time cannot be accurately judged. By some he was 
looked upon as a patriot; by others as a rebel; by 
many as a hero ; by many as a rogue. The move- 
ment whicli he headed had for its object political re- 
form. The closest investigation leads us to the' con- 
clusion that the religious ferment of LoUardry at the 
same time had nothing to do with Cade's rebellion. It 
was a rising of the peasants, under the leadership of a 
shrewd soldier, who called himself Mortimer, for the 
purpose of exciting feeling against the House of Lan- 
caster, and perhaps at the instigation of the Yorkist 
■action, to prepare the way for the Duke of York's 
claim upon the throne, as heir of the Mortimers. The 
Kentishmen were dwellers in the manufacturing dis- 
trict, and the sudden cessation of the French wars had 
wrought them harm. The complaint of the commons 
of Kent, according to the chronicles, called for "admin- 
istrative and economical reforms ; a change of ministry, 
a more careful expenditure of the royal revenue, and 
the restoration of the freedom of election." 

These were not excessive claims surely. A victory 



FATE OF cade: lOo 

over the royal troops, a quick march upon London, 
and the execution of Lord Say, gave Cade and his in- 
siu-gents prestige. The Royal Council yielded in form 
to their demands, and against Cade's advice the mal- 
contents disbanded. He still carried on the war, and 
opened jails for his soldiers, but the undisciplined 
host quarrelled among themselves, and deserted in 
nuinbers. Cade was finally killed by a civil officer, 
and the revolt came to an end with no advantage to 
the commons of Kent or of England. 

Shakespeare touches upon but one side of this re-* 
bellion, its absurd and illogical side. He was sorely in 
need of comedy for the tragic drama of Henry VL and 
pitched upon the social and political heresies of fif- 
teenth century socialism to provide it. 

Flippantly as he thus seems to treat a movement of 
respectable proportions , and for desirable ends, we 
cannot fail to read in the speeches of these lath-carry- 
ing heroes, a good deal of the bathos and lurid rhetoric 
with which our own times are more or less familiar. 
We need not find in this use of the Cade revolt an 
argument, as many do, to buttress the position that 
Shakespeare was an aristocrat, despising the people. 
It is too large a subject to more than advert to here. 
But while in this instance he does not even state Cade's 
side fairly, he does, what he doubtless intended as an 
artist, relieve the gloom of his drama; and as an his- 
torian, presents one true, if absurd, side of the move- 
ment. 

Jack Cade's preposterous claim to a royal pedigree, 
descendant of the Plantagenets and Mortimers, did 
not deceive his allies ; the very making of it was a stul- 
13 



19i FIFTEENTH CENTURY SOCIALISM. 

tification of the words of his followers that " there 
never was merry world in England since gentlemen 
came iip." ^ 

We notice that as soon as the rebel leader comes to 
power he is as arrogant as the bluest - blooded noble, 
and will strike a man dead for not addressing him as 
Lord Mortimer. This savors of modern times. Posi- 
tion and money make even anarchists conservative of 
their own— which is anarchistic heresy. As always, 
the unthinking people believe all things of all men if 
only they can have a try at upsetting the standing 
order of things. "Be brave, then," cries Cade, "for 
your captain is brave and vows reformation. There 
shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a 
penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and 
I will make it felony to drink small beer."- 

A bright thought occurs to Dick the butcher. " The 
first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." And Cade's 
answer, extravagantly expressed as it is, does most 
curiously indicate the mental attitude of the peasantry 
of that day, and of all people who think little and 
read not at all, toward instruments and institutions 
of whose origin or raison d'etre they are in total 
ignorance. "Is not tliis a lamentable thing, that of 
the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parch- 
ment ? that parchment, scribbled over, should undo a 
man?"^ 

The demagogue has the ignorance of his audience on 
his side. He has in behalf of his appeals that sullen 
jealousy of the masses who are conscious of classes, that 

1 Part II., Act IV., Scene 2. 2 Part II., Act IV., Scene 2. 

3 Ibid. 



DEATH OF LORD SAY. 195 

is, of a caste above them and more accomplished. That 
a man can write and read and cast accounts is mon- 
strous to the peasants who never hold a book save in 
awe, or a pen without fear of sorcery. So Cade's main 
charge against Lord Say, who was the chief noble sac- 
rificed in this uprising, is hardly exaggerated : "Thou 
hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm 
in erecting a grammar school ; and whereas, before, our 
fathers had no other book but the score and the tally, 
thou hast caused printing to be used ; and contrary to 
the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast erected a 
paper mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou 
hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun, and a 
verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear 
can endure to hear." ^ 

There was no escape from death when such charges 
were treason, and Lord Say died. But such revolts 
also die of their own fevers and Avounds. Cade moral- 
izes over the fickleness of his followers in a strain with 
which again we are made familiar throughout these 
chronicle plays : " Was ever feather so lightly blown 
to and fro as this multitude ? The name of Henry V. 
hales them to a hundred mischiefs, and leaves me des- 
olate." 2 

Meanwhile the Yorkist cause begins to lift its head 

' Part II., Act IV., Scene 7. 2 Part II., Act IV , Scene 8. 

Note. A century later, in 1671, Sir William Berkeley, Governor of 
Vivjjinia, wrote home to England, "I thank God there are no free schools 
or printin5:f, and I hope we ehall not have them these hundred years. For 
learning has brought heresy and disobedience and sects into the world, and 
printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God 
keep us from both."— Douglas Campbell's "Puritan in Holland, England 
and America,'' vol. i., p. 32. 



196 niSb: OF THE YORK FACTION. 

above the troubled sui'face of the nation's life. The 
York faction was accused of using Jack Cade to foment 
discontent and make people familiar with the name of 
Mortimer, through whom the Duke of York claimed 
inheritance. Shakespeare notices this in Scene 2 of 
Act IV., when Stafford says : "Jack Cade, the Duke of 
York hath taught you this," and although Cade answers 
in an aside, " He lies, for I invented it myself," it is 
not conclusive. It is altogether probable that as York 
used the death of Gloucester, the attainder of Suffolk, 
and the quarrels of the Churchmen of the period, so he 
used these discontents of the people to foment dissen- 
sion and further his own schemes. 

Poor Henry YI. is in a constant state of lamentation. 
He is no sooner well rid of Cade than the dire news 
comes of York's march with the Irish trgops, to osten- 
sibly remove the Duke of Somerset from power, but 
really to assert his owm claims to the throne. 

But now is Cade drawn back, his men disiDersed, 
And now is York in arms to second him.' 

Was never subject long'd to be a king 
As I do long and wish to be a subject.^ 

This was literally true. Henry has more fire and 
force in the J^lay than he had in history. But he was 
not fit to govern the England of the fifteenth century. 
He w^ould haA' e found his place in the nineteenth rather, 
lloyalty for its pomp and show and power was never 
dear to him. His books and his beads Avere more 
precious than sceptre and crown. He realizes this, and 

> Part II.. Act IV.. Scene 9. '- Ibid. 



THE RIVAL HOUSES. 197 

dimly, too, as Shakespeare hints, he feels that his fee- 
bleness is hurtful to the realm : 

Come, wife, let's in and learn to govern better, 
For yet may England curse my wretched reign.' 

We can but briefly touch uj)on the details of the furi- 
ous wars that culminated in these last days of Henry 
VI., although they were brewing as far back as Richard 
II. On the one hand is the House of Lancaster with 
Henry VI. and his son Edward, Prince of Wales, the 
centre of a group of nobles, whose interest, ambition, 
and loyalty cause them to wear the blood Eed Rose of 
the reigning house. The martial spiiit of this party 
is Margaret of Anjou, patient, revengeful, terrible ; fas- 
cinating and attractive for her high courage and splen- 
did hope. 

On the other hand is Richard Plantagenet, Duke o{ 
York, with his sons, Edward (afterwards the Fourth), 
Edmund Rutland, who dies early in the strife, George, 
afterwards the " false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," and 
ablest, most unscrupulous, self-contained of all, Richard 
Gloster, the hunchback duke, afterwards known to in- 
famy as Richard III. The guiding spirit of this house, 
among a host of others who wore the milk White Rose 
of York, was Warwick, well named the King-maker. 

When once the shock of battle is joined, Henry VI. 
drops out of the actual contest, save as he is taken up, 
first by one and then the other of these factions, who 
shrouded their own ambitions beneath his robe of roy- 
alty. He is simply a shuttlecock. Margaret and War- 
wick are the master-hands in this game of war. The 

' Part II., Act IV , Scene 9. 



.198 VICTORY OF THE YORKIl^TS. 

claims of York are urged upon Henry and Parliament, 
vf' ^ after various skirniislies and battles in wliicli the j^re- 
I )i^,.te3itler to the throne is usually worsted. The Parlia- 
n^ ment of 1560 at length came to a compromise as the 
only way of settling a question that promised to dis- 
tract the land interminably. This was that Henry 
should reign for life, and that York and his heirs should 
succeed to the crown. We can imagine the maternal 
fury of Margaret, who was away from London when 
this grave matter was discussed and settled. By this 
pact her son was robbed cf his rights forever. She 
loses no time, but flies to arms, and in the battle of 
Wakefield the Duke of Y^ork is slain, and his son 
Edward succeeds to his. pretensions. Margaret let slip 
the fruit of her victory to indulge her revengeful nature 
in some executions, and the young Edward, dropping 
the mask of loyalty to Henry YI., marches upon Lon- 
don, is proclaimed rightful king, and once more the 
fierce contention comes to shock of battle, at Towton. 
Here AYarwick for the Y^orkists won a great battle, one 
of the bloodiest in English history. Henry and Mar- 
garet fled away. Edward lY. was crowned king, and 
but for a feeble struggling moment or two of seeming 
^ power afterwards mider the powerful banner of War- 
wick who now opposed them, the Lancastrians passed 
into obscurity. The House of Plantagenet was still 
upon the throne, but the usurpation of Bolingbroke 
was avenged, and the York branch resumed the seat 
which belonged to it of hereditary right. 

Edward is variously described as a soldier and a vo- 
luptuary. He was a mixture, not strange, of both. 
That he fought bravely ever is beyond doubt. That 



WARWICK'S DEFECTION. lOD 

lie was ever fond of " silken dalliance " is equally so. 
Warwick had made liim, and literally had placed him 
on the throne. He deserved some consideration, but 
Edward thought he asked too inucli. 

While the great baron is at the court of France suiug 
for the hand of the French princess for the English 
king, Edward takes the bit in his royal teeth, and 
marries off-hand a lady of the court whose modest 
beauty charmed and captivated him.' Margaret and 
Warwick are both suppliants now before the throne of 
Louis of France, but in what different case. Margaret 
a discrowned C[ueen, her husband a willing hermit in 
exile, her son, for wdiom she pleads, a beggar at her 
side. She has little enough to offer in the way of alli- 
ance with the proud French sovereign. Warwick, on 
the other- hand, is empowered to offer the hand of one 
of the greatest kings of Christendom to the daughter 
of France. Margaret sues wirth tears and promises ; 
Warwick with gallant smiles and gold. What wonder 
Warwick wins. It was an age when on the surface of 
things might made right. 

But just at the moment when this " proud setter- 
up and puller-down " is carrying all before him, Mar- 
garet has a strange and unexpected victor}^ News out 
of England. Edward's light marriage with tl\e Lady 
Grey. " King Louis," cried War^^dck to that angry 
and misused monarch, 

" I here protest in sight of Heaven, 
And by the hope I have of heavenly bHss, 

1 Nothing is historically certain concerning this episode except that 
Edward married the Lad}' EHzabeth Grey, Shakespeare's delineation is 
taken from Sir Thomas More, . 



200 DOWNFALL OF LAjYOASTFR. 

That I am clear from this misdeed of Edward's, 
No more my king, for he dishonors mc. 

I here renounce him and return to Henry. 
My noble queen, let former grudges pass, 
And henceforth I am thy true servitor." 
Mar. Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love, 
And I forgive and quite forget old faults, 
And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.^ 

So the mother and the queen drops out of account her 
personal indignities, for the sake of her exiled husband 
and her youthful son : 

My mourning weeds are laid aside, 
And I am ready to jDut armor on.- 

Yet Warwick was no lover of the Lancastrian. His 
pride is touched at Edward's treachery to himself, 
and 

Not that I pity Henry's misery, 

But seek revenge on Edward's mockery,^ 

is his Avatchword for that bloody campaign, whereof 
Margaret's was husband and son, king and prince. 

Again the rude shock of war. The powerful King- 
maker once more ])ulls down a king, and seats the old- 
time occupant. Then follows Barnet, and Warwick 
dies. Tewkesbury follows, and the final downfall of 
Henry of Lancaster, who returns thankfully to his 
Tower prison, while Margaret is first imprisoned and 
then exiled from the country. 

1 Part ITT , Act HI . Scene 3. 
2 Ibid. - Ibid. 



MARGARET OF ANJOF. 201 

The House of York is seated firml}- on the throne. 
The troubled Margaret of Anjou retii'es to France and 
her father's toy kingdom, after a feeble and futile at- 
tempt to rally the lost cause of the Red Eose. The 
murder of her son, which is dramatically told by the 
poet, is historic only as to the fact ; but Margaret's 
lament over him^ is a just apostrophe upon those sav- 
ai^'e times. 

There were fine jjoints in Margaret's character. We 
must ever bear in mind that Shakespeare Avas unable 
to do her the justice which the great Scotchman does in 
his novel, " xlnne of Geierstein," where is pathetically 
told the story of her last days. Our poet gives the 
mob judgment of Margaret, the English mob judg- 
ment at that. It is w^ell to remember in making up 
our minds as to the truth of Shakespeare's character 
study, that he was pronouncing it upon the chieftain 
of a defeated house, of a broken dynasty, and a French 
w^oman, to wdiom directly and indirectly was traceable 
a good deal of England's humiliation. We shall come 
upon her ghost, as it were, in the play of " Richard 
III," where, after a strange fashion, the poet commits 
the greatest of his many anachronisms by her introduc- 
tion, and at the same time points his moral and adorns 
his tale the better for his historic untruth. 

Those scenes in which are introduced the conjurer 
Bolingbroke, the witch Margery Jourdan, and the two 
qnarrelling bourgeois, Horner and his apprentice,^ as 
well as that in which the impostor Simpcox is ex- 
posed," will well repay careful reading. Together with 

iPart III., Act v.. Scene 5. 2 Part II. , Act II., Scene 3. 

- Part II., Act II., Scene 1. 



202 RICIJARI) GLOSTER. 

the Jack Cade incident they pour floods of light upon 
the social life of the England of this period. 

With the close of Part III. we begin to have 
glimpses revealing the nature, ambitions, and evil 
heart of Eichard Gloster, afterwards Eichard III. and 
last of the House of Plantagenet. The interview with 
patient old King Henry, which ends in his violent 
death at the hands of his nephew, gives us the key to 
that character which, next to that of Hamlet, seems 
the least resolvable of all Shakespeare's work. Over 
the dead body of his former king and kinsman, the 
wild beast in Eichard growls : 

If any spark of life is yet remaining 

Down, down to liell and say I sent thee thither, 

I, that have neither pity, love nor fear. 

Clarence, beware, thou keep'st me from the light, 
But I will sort a pitchy day for thee, 
For I will buzz abroad such prophecies 
That Edward shall be fearful of liis life, 
And then to purge the fear, I'll be thy death. 
King Henry and the prince his son are gone, 
Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest.' 

And while these dark clouds and steaming mists of 
bloody plots are thus rising over the soul of the king's 
youngest brother, that king is in the midst of his loyal 
friends, with his family about him, resting from the 
toils of war. 

Once more we sit in England's royal throne. 

Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss thy boy. 
Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself 

' Part 111., Act v., Scene 6, 

V 



THE PRINCES OF THE TOWER. 203 

Have in our armor watched the winter's night, 
Went all afoot in summer's scalding heat, 
That thou might'st repossess the crown in peace ; 
And of our labors thou shalt reap the gain.' 

Poor young prince, tlie Tower looms up before thee, 
though thou seest it not ; and the shadow of it falls 
upon thy young life, lying in thy mother's lap, cast by 
the baleful eyes of him who cries in affected loyalt}^ : 

And that I love the tree from whence thou sprangest 
Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit. ^ 

» Part III., Act v., Scene 7. « Part III., Act V., Scene 7. 



KICHAKD III. 

The source of this play is Sir Thomas More's " Life 
of Richard III." More was a member of the house- 
hold of the Bishop of Ely of the play, and must have 
had the best of opportunities for getting at the real 
facts. His history was incorporated into Hall and Ho- 
linshed's " Chronicle." Shakespeare follows him with 
great faithfulness, particularly in his description of 
Richard's j^erson, and acts upon the hints of More in 
charging Richard's several crimes upon him. 

Two other plays on the same subject were in exist- 
ence, having only few things in common with Shake- 
speare, and these mainly of such a nature as could be 
secured by any l^iographer. 

One of these, in Latin, by Dr. Thomas Legge, was 
said to have been acted at Cambridge in 1579. 

The other was in English (anonymous) : Tlte True 
Tragedy of Bichanl III.^ Wherein is shown the death of 
Edivard IV., and the smothering of the two young prin- 
ces in the Toiver. 

Shakepeare's " Richard " is mentioned by Meres, 
having been published in 1597, and was issued in five 
quarto editions, besides the First Folio. 



CHEONOLOGY OF EDWARD IV. (FROM 1471), EDWARD 
v., AND RICHARD III. 

(Shakespeare includes these all under the title-play of "Richard III.") 

1471. Edward IV. reiguing iu peace. 

1473. Richard Gloster marries Anue Neville, daughter of War- 
wick, who had been either married or betrothed to the sou 
of Henry VI., slain at Tewkesbury. 

1475. Invasion of France under Edward IV., which results in 
the treaty of Picquiney. Under this treaty Edward was given 
a large sum of money ; a marriage was arranged between his 
daughter and the son of Louis XI.; and Margaret of Anjou 
was released from her confinement to find a home with her 
father. King Rene. 

1478. The Duke of Clarence arraigned and executed for trea- 
son. His family attainted. 

1483. Death of Edward IV. (April 9). Edward V. (his son, 
aged 12^ years) enters London (May 4). The peers swear 
fealty. Richard Gloster chosen Protector. The queen moth- 
er seeks sanctuary through fear of the Protector. Richard 
denounces the queen's relations as traitors. The Duke of 
York (younger brother of Edward V.) removed from "sanc- 
tuary," under promise of life and good treatment. June 22, 
Dr. Shaw's sermon at Paul's Cross, declaring the illegitimacy 
of Edward V. and the Duke of York. June 25, an assem- 
bly of prelates and nobles (not a parliament) declared the 
fact of illegitimacy. June 26, Richard acknowledged by 
the peers as King of England. July 26, Richard and Anne 
crowned. The young princes disappear from English his- 
tory, the public rumor being that they were murdered. Oct.- 
Nov., revolt of the Duke of Buckingham. Earl of Rich- 
mond (last of the Lancastrian family) driven off by a storm 
from an attempted descent upon England. 

1485. Henry, Earl of Richmond, sails from Harfleur to lay 
claim to the throne of England. Richard III. meets him and 
is defeated and slain at Bosworth Field (Aug. 21). Rich- 
mond crowned as Henrv VII. on the battle-field. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

RICHARD III.— THE LAST OF THE PLANTAGENETS. 

Essential difference between "Richard III." and the other historical plays. 
— Why Richard is treated with more severity than other historical 
characters equally depraved. — The political situation at the beginning 
of the play. — The queen's party versus the nobles with Buckingham at 
their head. — T^'hree great historical events marked in the drama. — (I.) 
The death of Edward IV. — (II.) Richard's successful usurpation of the 
throne. — (III.) Bosworth Field and Richmond. — Events between the 
death of Henry VI. and that of Edward. — The clearing of the field for 
Richard's ambitious plan. — The seizure of Clarence. — The unspeakable 
wooing of Anne by Richard. — The clashing of rival court factions. — 
Underplay of Margaret's fury. — Her artistic introduction in the drama. 
• — Edward IV. eflfects a hollow reconciliation between the queen's fac- 
tion and the nobles. — Edward's death. — Struggle of the rival factions 
to gain control of the young king. — Richard and Buckingham win. — 
Fall of the queen's kindred. — The princes lodged in the Tower. — 
Buckingham saps the popular loyalty by hinting at the illegitimacy of 
both Edward IV. and his sons. — Gloster's "scruples" overcome. — 
Gloster's ambition attained and he is crowned with Anne as queen. — 
The thorn in Richard's crown. — The falling away of Buckingham. — 
Death of the young princes.— Richmond's star begins to rise. — First 
revolt against Richard is crushed. — Richmond unable to land, and 
Buckingham defeated. — Anne dies, and Richard schemes for the hand 
of his niece Elizabeth. — This princess is pledged to Richmond by the 
faction opposed to Richard. — Gathering of the discontented nobles. — 
Night before the battle of Bosworth. — Visions of the rival command- 
ers. — Their moral raison cCHre. — The day of battle ; defeat of Rich- 
ard and crowning of Richmond as Henry VII. — End of the Wars of the 
Roses. — Encouragement to literature under Edward and Richard. — 
Progress of the commons. 

The curtain rises now upon the last act of the epic 
drama depicting the rise and fall of the House of Plan-^ 
tagenet and, incidentally, the decay of the feudal sys- 



THE PLAY A CHARACTER STUDY. 207 

tern which had been the backbone of English life from 
the days of William the Conqueror, 

There is a very great difference between the hand- 
ling of the incidents in " Richard III." and the method 
followed in the other historical plays. It is a charac- 
ter portrait. One figure dominates the movement of 
every scene and moulds the arrangement of every 
detail. 

From King John to Henry VI. we have a series of 
panoramic views. The stage is crowded with figures 
of considerable importance. There are currents of 
movement apart from the titular hero. 

But in Richard III., from the moment of his intro- 
duction in the famous sarcastic soliloquy : 

Now is the winter of our discontent 

Made glorious summer by this sun of York, ' 

until he dies fighting against fate on Bosworth Field, 
the subtle devil in the hunchback's heart plays with 
the other persons of the drama, and dominates their 
every movement. "I am myself alone," these words of 
the man self-exiled from S3anpathetic intercourse Avith 
his fellows express his character, and form the key-note 
of the whole bloody tragedy. 

All readers approach this play with preconceived 
ideas, for which Shakespeare himself is largely respon- 
sible. There have been other historical personages as 
blqody and villainous as Richard, but few have been 
treated with such critical severity. The reason is that 
Richard is made the mouth-piece of his own depravity. 

lAct I., -Scene 1. 



208 RICHARDS CHARACTER. 

Ordinary villains have an excuse, however poor, for 
their villainy, which is their mask to the outer world, 
and which not unfrequentlj deceives themselves. We 
are able to trace this in the case of Henry VIII., ^\\\o 
argues himself learnedly and conscientiously into the 
loathsome act of divorcing Katharine of Aragon that 
he may marry Anne Boleyn. But Richard makes no 
excuses. To the woman he seeks to marry for the 
great property she has, he declares that he did kill her 
husband and her father. To his criminal intimates, 
for he had no others, he is quite barefaced in his pro- 
,posals of new crimes. He bargains bluntly for the 
death of his brother, and treats the murder of his 
nephews as an ordinary commercial transaction. 

Whatever Richard was in his life, this is the verdict 
of history upon him : that he was a villain so iinnat- 
ural as to be almost supernatural, and Shakespeare, 
taking this portraiture directly from the chronicles, 
exaggerated it upon the screen of his tragedy. So long 
as men put forth extenuating circumstances for their 
crimes, so long it is always possible to drop the mantle 
of charity over their misdeeds. But when they glory 
in guilt, this cannot be done. Richard glories in his 
deviltry, and takes posterity into his confidence through 
those soliloquies of the poet which are psychological 
studies in shamelessness. The soliloquies in " Richard 
III." are a dramatic necessity. We could not get at 
the real man without them. But in the mouth of Rich- 
ard the soliloquies are far more than instruments of 
dramatic art ; they are in keeping with the character 
Shakespeare seeks to lay before us. There was abso- 
lutely no soul in whom Richard could confide. To 



THE SOLILOQUIES. 209 

first this one, then that, of his subordinate allies, he 
divulges certain acts to be performed, and in so far as 
Buckingham, for instance, is necessary to the working 
out of a scheme, he allows him to know that little cor- 
ner of his mind. But confidant he has none. " I am 
mj^seK alone " expressed his relation or lack of rela- 
tion with his surroundings. He loves no one, trusts 
no one, strange to say, hates no one, but uses alk 
Now such a man must, as it were, think aloud ; that 
is, he must crystallize his thoughts, emotions, instincts 
into concrete words, and confide in himself at all 
events. He must arrange and clarify his thoughts 
in order to proceed upon the orderly lines that lead to 
success in Avhatever undertaking. 

Here we have, then, a self-revelation, not only as a 
rhetorical ornament and dramatic necessity, but as a 
psychological truth. Hence we have the naked villain, 
with nothing held back or shaded off, as it would be 
were he conversing with another. 

The political situation at the beginning of the play 
is faintly indicated in the opening speech of Eichard, 
who thus throws his baleful shadow forward over the 
future, in sarcastic jeering at his brother Edward's 
peaceful disposition, reflected, it will be remembered, 
in the last scene of " Henry VI. : " 

Giim-visaged War bath smootlieil his wrinkled front : 
And now instead of mounting barbed steeds 
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, 
He capers nimblv in a lady's chamber 
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.' 

' Act 1., Scene 1. 

14 



210 THE COURT FACTIONS. 

Affairs of state do not now engage the thoughts of 
Eichard, but only his own relations to these " piping 
times of peace." 

I that am curtailed of this fair proj^ortion, 
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, 
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time 
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, 
And that so lamely and unfashionable 
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them, 

I am determined to prove a villain. - 

Edward reigned in peace, after the exhausting and 
bloody v/ar of succession. A mock campaign into 
France, which began with claiming the throne, and 
ended in receiving a pension to keep away from France, 
was the only semblance of war, if we omit the ever- 
recurring border troubles between England and Scot- 
land. 

From tlie wreckage of civil strife, a single waif 
tossed for awhile upon its troubled waters, and then 
washed upon the shores of Brittany, there to bide his 
time, the Earl of Richmond, was the only possible con- 
testant with the House of York for the throne. 

There were two parties grouped about the throne of 
Edward IV. The queen's, comprised mainly of her 
own family and their adherents lately taken from the 
untitled gentry, as she hei^elf had been, and made 
over into earls and dukes — Rivers, Dorset, Grey. 
The old nobles' faction was headed by Buckingham, 
and quietly sympathized with by Richard Gloster. 

1 Act I., Scene 1. 



MURDER OF CLARENCE. 211 

Tlie tliree events around which the action of the 
play centres are : (I.) the death of Edward IV.; (II.) the 
successful usurpation of Richard Gloster ; (III.) Bos- 
worth Field and the coming of Earl Richmond. 

After the death of Henry VI., Edward IV. reigned 
twelve years, years of peace and exhaustion. All Eng- 
land lay bleeding and gasping for the life that had 
been well-nigh drained from her system in the long 
duel of the White and Red Roses. This play covers a 
period of fourteen years from 1471 to 1485. One-half 
of the period is treated, in its essential points, in the 
first act, closing with the death of Clarence, which 
happened in 1478. 

The first historical event which comes to our notice 
is the seizure of the Duke of Clarence, which is here 
somewhat advanced in point of time.^ The poet took 
a hint of the chronicle, and upon it based this direct 
murder of Clarence by Gloster. Although the latter 
was certainly to benefit by Clarence's death, and we 
may readily suppose that he was not averse to it, still 
the simple truth is that Edward himself was afraid of 
his brother Clarence, and had him arrested on charges 
of sorcery similar to those alleged against the Duchess 
of Gloucester in the preceding reign. But before the 
death of Clarence, Richard Gloster, marrying Anne 
Neville, became his brother-in-law. Monstrous as this 
marriage seems, Shakespeare has made it almost plau- 
sible. Anne was the daughter of Warwick, the King- 
maker, the widow of Henry VI. 's son, who, if the 
battle of Tewkesbury had had another termination, 
would have succeeded his father upon the throne. To 

1 Act I., Scene I. 



212 THE WOOING OF ANNE. 

woo the widow of one and daughter of another of his 
victims within two years after their death would seem 
the height of hateful audacity. Shakespeare makes 
the contrast sharper by beginning and ending the gris- 
ly courtship over the very coffin of Henry VI., as it is 
borne to its place of burial accompanied by the weep- 
ing Anne. This wresting of the historic fact has its 
meaning, however. Two years had not passed when 
the marriage was accomplished. The poet indicates 
the judgment of mankind upon such an unnatural union 
by declaring in fact that lapse of time could not suffi- 
ciently excuse it on Anne's part. If she consented after 
two years she would have said yes over the murdered 
body of her father-in-law. 

It is the most unspeakable wooing of history or fic- 
tion, as Eichard even was fain to confide to himseK : 

Was ever woman in this humor woo'd ? 
Was ever woman in this humor won ? 

What ! I, that killed her husband and her father, 

To take her in her heart's extremest hate ; 

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, 

The bleeding witness of her hatred by ; 

Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me, 

And I no friends to back my suit withal, 

But the plain devil and dissembling looks. 

And yet to win her, all the world to nothing, ^ 

Now to understand the mental and moral attitude of 
the Lady Anne under such circumstances we should 
have the benefit of a woman's criticism. We search in 
vain among the characters touched by the pen of Mrs. 

1 Act I., Scene 2. 



ANNE'S MOTIVES. 213 

Jamesou aud Laclj Helen Faucit Martin. Anne is 
passed over. The masculine mind fails to plumb the 
depths of this feminine mystery. Courtenay decides 
offhand that Anne's complacency is proof that Richard 
was not actually guilty of that double murder at least, 
which is an admirable petitlo ijrincipii. Hudson 
simply remarks that her " seeming levity in yielding is 
readily forgiven in the sore burden of grief it entails 
upon her," and that her nature is " all too soft to stand 
against the crafty and merciless tormentor into whose 
hand she has given herself." 

To my mind there is one explanation and one only. 
Richard was the strong man of his times. Ugly, de- 
formed. 

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass, 

still he was a powerful individuality. By sheer force 
of intellectual strength he dominated, and fascinated 
men as well as women. If by any chance Anne had 
come under the spell of Richard's magic winning 
power, she could easily proceed step by step, from 
hatred of his crimes and contempt for his person, to ad- 
miring his genius, and, exulting that, even in seeming, 
the strong man was at her feet. She might not have 
really believed that her "beauty was the cause of that 
effect," but she must have been moved to hear it so al- 
leged. In other words, Anne was in love with Richard, 
and all that sparring of the courtship scene is the resist- 
ance of one who expects to be captured and desires to 
be. It must be remembered of course that even with 
such a dissembler as Richard one interview would 
not accomplish all he achieved. Nearly two years' 



214 RICHARD'S OBJECT. 

romantic pursuit, baffled again and again by tlie jeal- 
ousy of Clarence, is crowded within the compass of 
these lines. Clarence had married Anne's sister, and 
did not wish to share the great King-maker's wealth 
with his brother. 

Kichard's object in the marriage was two-fold : first, 
to get Anne's enormous property, and second, perhaps, 
to unite himself ever so slenderly with the Lancaster 
family, in preparation for his future assault upon 
the throne. Clarence is now haled to his death. In 
the play Eichard is made the head and front of his 
sudden taking off, while Edward the king holds back, 
and is only with difficulty induced to sign the death- 
warrant, which he laments in a beautiful passage in 
answer to an appeal to save the life of a courtier's 
servant : 

Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death, 
And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave ? 
My brother killed no man, his fault was thought, 
And yet his punishment was bitter death. 
Who sued to me for him ? ' 

There is no doubt that Eichard saw Clarence's 
death with complacency, and perhaps helped the king 
to its commission, but because Gloster has the bad 
name, we may not excuse Ed^vard from the darkest 
stigma of his brother's execution. 

Intermingled with the plottings Aveaving about the 
doomed, " false, fleeting, perjured Clarence " are indi- 
cations of a growing restlessness in the royal house- 
hold and in the court. 

^ Act II., Scene 1. 



DOMESTIC QUARRELS. 215 

The factions of, respectively, the queen and the 
old noble families are clashing hotty. It will be re- 
membered that Edward's love-match with the Lady 
Elizabeth Grey had not been pleasing to the court, 
an}^ more than to Warwick. In " Henry YI." the king 
argues with his nobles, endeavoring to placate them, 
but incidentally is shown his secret misgivings and 
their scarce repressed disgust. 

The speedy exaltation of the new queen's sons and 
relatives, the intermarriage of her family with some 
of the old aristocracy of the realm, perhaps her own 
indiscretions, natural to newdy created royalty, all had 
weight in intensifying this feeling. Gloster made use 
of it. He hints to Clarence on that unfortunate's ar- 
rest : 

Why, this it is when men are mled by women. 

'Tis not the king that sends you to the Tower ; 

My Lady Grey, his wife, Clarence, 'tis she 

That tempers him to this extremity. 

The jealous o'erworn widow and herself, 

Since that our brother dubbed them gentlewomen, 

Are mighty gossips in our monarchy.' 

The quarrels between these factions at court, out of 
which Gloster makes his capital by assuming that he 
has been injured in the king's eye by Elizabeth's repre- 
sentations, are made an occasion for the strangest 
historical anachronism, and yet most faithful inter- 
pretation of that stormy period. 

The queen, smarting under unjust accusations and 
insults, replies after a long, quarrelsome discussion, in 

' Act I., Scene 1. 



1^16 APPEARANCK OF MARGARET. 

which the different characters are set forth, revolving 
still about Richard and his schemes : 

Mj lord of Gloster, I have too long borne 
Your blunt Tipbraidings and your bitter scoJBfs. 
By Heaven, I will acquaint his majesty 
Of tliose gross taunts that oft I have endured. 
I'd rather be a country servant-maid 
Than a great queen with this condition, 
To be so baited, scorned, and stormed at : 
Small joy have I in being England's queen. ' 

And now appears, first in asides, unseen by the per- 
sons of the drama, and then openly, Margaret of An- 
jou. Actually she had at this time retired to her exile 
on the Continent, and was nursing her sad memories 
far from the shores where she had played a man's part 
battling for her rights. But potentially she was pies- 
ent at the factional quarrels of the English court, in a 
real and sensible manner. In one way she had been 
one of the occasions of the Wars of the Roses. Her 
marriage with Henry VI. had been accomplished at 
the cost of French provinces, won in glorious battle. 
She opposed the power of tliose English nobles who 
sought to hold her husband in tutelage. She had 
pinned the Lancastrian rose to her proud bosom in 
loyalty, and nourished its failing petals Avhile others 
were falling away from the losing cause. She had 
kept the embers of civil strife alive, and to her indom- 
itable perseverance in behalf of her husband and son 
England owed much of the miseries of the last days of 
Henry VI. But she had been fighting for a principle, 

1 Act!., Scenes. 



MARGARET'S CURSE. 'lil 

honorable and noble, against injustice, perjury, and 
wrong. She was defeated, her husband slain, her son 
deprived of his heritage. By poetic license she now 
comes back to the scene of her former triumphs and 
defeats, to gloat over the factional struggles of her ene- 
mies. One after another, in asides, she characterizes 
the quarrellmg courtiers, the queen, Gloster, the mem- 
ory of Clarence, " Avho did forsake his father, War- 
wick, and forswear himself," and finally breaks forth 
in their faces : 

Hear me, you wrangling pirates that fall out 
In sharing that which you have piU'ecl from me. 

But at once the chorus is turned upon the person of 
their common enemy. Their own quarrels are forgot- 
ten in the meed of cui'sing due this foreign interloper. 
*' What," she cries, 

" Were you snarling all before I came, 
Ready to catch each other by the throat, 
And turn you all your hatred now on me ? 

Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven ? 

Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses. 

Though not by wars, by surfeit die your king, 

As ours by murder to make him a king. 

Edward, thy son, that now is Prince of Wales, 

For Edward, my son, which was Prince of Wales, 

Die in his youth by like untimely violence. 

Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen, 

Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self. 

Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's death 

And see another, as I see thee now, 

Decked in thy rights, as I am stalled in mine. 



218 DRAMATIC USE OF MARGARET. 

Rivers and Dorset, you \vere standers by — 
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings — when my son 
Was stabbed with bloody daggers. God, I pray him 
That none of you may live your natural age. 
But by some unlooked accident cut off. ' 

We forbear to quote her awful curse upon Eichard, 
whom she instinctively recognizes as the real " troub- 
ler of this poor world's peace." But it will be observed 
that Margaret is introduced much after the fashion of 
Chorus, a combination of prediction and commentary 
upon the persons and events with wdiom her influence 
is still powerful. This vindictive shade of Margaret 
in the play is one of the great artistic and dramatic 
triumphs of the poet. Absent in body, she is literally 
still present in English intrigue and j)olitics. As these 
very factional quarrels proceeded from the victory of 
the York faction over the Lancastrian, whose virile 
chieftain Margaret had been, and whose wrongs had 
been mainly involved, so the dramatic use of her rest- 
less ghost as the mouthpiece of vengeance is justified. 
Her invocation was to be sorely and literall}^ fulfilled. 
At the end of this scene Gloster's soliloquy upon 
his own hypocrisy is worth re-reading as the poet's 
conception of his historic character : 

I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. 

Clarence, whom I indeed have cast in darkness 
I do beweep to many simple gulls, 
Namely, to Stanley, Hastings, Buckingham, 
And tell them 'tis the queen and her allies 
That stir the king against the duke my brother. 

1 Act I. , Scene 3, 



A HOLLOW PEACE. 219 

Now they believe me, and withal whet me 

To be revenged on Rivers, Dorset, Grey, 

But then I sigh, and with a j^iece of Scripture 

Tell them that God bids us do good for evil ; 

And thus I clothe my naked villany 

With old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ, 

And seem a saint when most I play the devil.' 

Most evil men seek to cast a decent veil of excuse 
over their real and inner life. But Eicliard drew no 
veils whatsoever. He simply played hypocrite, acted 
as a hypocrite might act, but only used hypocrisy as 
he used demagogism, to accomplish his personal ends 
for the moment. The act ends with the actual murder 
of Clarence at Richard's instigation. 

We are now introduced to the ^bedside of the dying 
Edward, who had the end, somewhat unjisual in his 
house, of dying in his bed. This scene of the appar- 
ent reconciliation of the two opposing parties of the 
realm is historic. 

Well did Edw^ard know the probabilities of a renewal 
of internecine strife. Well did he know Gloster's am- 
bitious soul. Well, also, he must have known the rival- 
ries between the newly made nobles and those of the 
old regime. To patch up a peace, and make them 
swear fealty to each other and to the young prince 
who was to succeed to the throne, was the only thing 
Edward could do, as, when brought face to face with 
death, he says : 

I eyery day expect an embassage 

From my Eedeemer, to redeem me hence, 

1 Act I. , Scene 3. 



220 (JHAHAUTEH OF EDWARD IV. 

And now in peace my soul shall part in lieaven, 
Since I have made my friends at peace on earth.' 

So died Edward lY., as strange a compound of king as 
ever sat upon a throne. 

Bulwer-Lytton's novel, "^' The Last of the Barons," 
gives a very fair if not flattering portrait of him. At 
once soldier and voluptuary, with a good mind and a 
weak will ; haughtily independent to the point of break- 
ing his word with the King of France and the powerful 
Warwick, in order that he might marry a simple gen- 
tlewoman for love, yet easily led by his favorites ; 
a patron of learning, yet loose of life. He had the 
weakness of Henry YI. without the gentle sweetness 
of soul that redeemed it. He will occupy a fair place 
in history, mainly because of a somewhat neutral reign 
sandwiched between the helplessness of his predeces- 
sor and the cruelty and ferocity of his virtual successor, 
for his son, Edward Y., reigned but thirteen weeks. 
And now begins that struggle for a throne, none the 
less bitter and blighting because it did not appear 
upon the surface of events. Richard Gloster was in 
the north on some warlike errand for the crown, when 
he learned that Edward lY. had passed away. The 
hollow truce patched up by the dead king dissolves at 
once. • Outwardly there is no opposition to the coro- 
nation of young Edward Y. But his mother knows the 
perils of the way to a secure seat upon that throne 
where she had sat so fearfully, though held there by a 
royal hand. The queen's relations and friends feel 
instinctively that their fate is bound up with that of the 
child-king. The people have their thoughts, too, which 

i Act II., Scene 1. 



GLOSTER SEIZE8 THE PHTNCE. 221 

they express with bated breath. Says one citizen greet- 
ing another : 

Doth the news hold of good King Edward's death ? 
Ay, sir, it is too true ; God helj) the while. 
Then, masters, look to see a troublous world. 

Woe to that land that's governed by a child.' 

They knew, perhaps, of Eichard II. 's childish grasp 
upon the sceptre, and they had felt the evils of Henry 
YI.'s babe-royalty. 

There was no time lost by either side. The two 
young princes, Edward, now the Fifth, and Eichard, 
Duke of York, were with their mother, guarded by 
Eivers, Dorset, Grey, upstarts in the eyes of Buck- 
ingham and his fellows. Eichard Gloster moves to 
London to assist in his nephew's coronation, Avhich 
was set for April 4th. Edward, surrounded by his 
mother's clan — Eivers, Yaughan, and Grey notably — 
proceeds from Ludlow Castle toward London. Eivers, 
on the part of the boy-king, meets Gloster at North-' 
ampton and is there arrested. The young king and his 
friends are joined at Stony Stratford the next morning 
by the ambitious duke Avith Buckingham at his heels 
to cany out his behests. The friends of the queen 
are arrested, and the boy-king surrounded by his 
enemies, who profess friendship and fealty, as well as 
thanksgiving at having rescued him from those who 
sought, as they said, to gain control of his person only 
to subvert the realm. This is the beginning of the 

' Act II. , Scene 2. 



222 OLOSTER MADE PROTECTOR. 

end. The party of Gloster proceed, ostensibl}^ yet for 
the purpose of celebrating the coronation, to London. 

But meanwhile news of these rough measures had 
flown to the queen's ears. 

** All, me," slie cries, *' I sec the ruin of my house ; 
The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind, 
Insulting tyranny begins to jet 
Upon the innocent and aweless throne." ' 

She seizes upon what she believes is the last chance 
of safety for herself, and wdtli the young Duke of 
York flies to the sanctuary of Westminster. 

Now follows the swearing of loyalty to Edward V. 
by the nobility, with Richard, Duke of Gloster, as 
Protector of the realm. The ambitious schemer has 
nearly reached the top round of his plotting. He is in 
a position to reward his allies, which he does with 
a liberal hand, using his semi-royal prerogative to bind 
them closer to his interests. Hastings was still with 
Ptichard and Buckingham, believing that in the arrest 
of the queen's friends he was but securing the best 
interests of the realm. The young king is lodged in 
the Tower, awaiting the still delayed coronation. The 
next move in the tragedy is set down by Shakespeare 
with unsparing fidelity. It is a meeting of the Council : 
Hastings speaks : 

Now, noble peers, the cause why we are met 

Is to determine of the coronation. 

In God's name, speak. When is the royal day ? 

Buck. Who knows the Lord Protector's mind herein ? '^ 
1 Act II., Scene 4. - Act III., Scene 4. 



GLOSTER'S CONSPIRACY. 223 

Enters now Gloster, who after some light compli- 
ment to Hastings and a request that the Bishop of 
Ely should send for some notable strawberries, takes 
Buckingham aside : 

Cousin of BuckingLam, a word with you. 
Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business, 
And finds the testy gentleman so hot 
That he will lose his head ere give consent 
His master's child, as worshipfully he terms it, 
Shall lose the royalty of England's throne.* 

The conspirators withdraw for consultation, but to 
speedily return for the acting out of their drama. 
Hastings, representing the loyal nobility, faithful to 
the throne and blood royal, rather than to this or that 
faction, stands in the way of their plot. Gloster bursts 
out wrathfully, addressing the Council : 

I pray you all, tell me what they deserve 
That do conspire my death with devilish plots 
Of damned witclicraft, and that have prevailed 
Upon my body with their hellish charms? - 

AVith well - simulated rage he levels his malicious 
charges against Hastings, and exhibits his withered 
arm (which had been so from his birth) as though it 
were the result of sorcery. Slowdy that innocent 
victim, who had been warned by Stanley of the ap- 
proaching storm, realizes his doom and England's 

woe : 

Woe, woe for England, not a whit for me, 
For I, too fond, might have prevented this 

1 Act 111., Scene 1 2 Ibid. 



224: BASENESS OF G LOST Eli. 

Oh, Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse 
Is lighted on poor Hastings' wretched head J 

And this is tlie end of almost the only amiable and 
virtuous man who plays a man's part in this tragedy. 
The pitiful subterfuges of Gloster and Buckingham, 
that they had been suddenly attacked, the peace of 
the realm threatened, and the king imperilled by a 
plot against the Lord Protector, were all too success- 
ful, and the citizens of London Avere infected with the 
subtle poison of doubt concerning the legitimacy of 
Edward IV. and consequently of his sons. 

The reputation of Edward as a loose gallant was a 
well-chosen basis of attack against his character. 
The mass of people are, on the whole, trtie to the 
domestic instincts, and resent their betrayal, especially 
by those who are set over them in authority. The 
homes of England have ever been the source of her 
real strength in courts and on battle-fields. Singularly 
enough, too, the most hated of vices is easiest of belief 
by those who detest it most. It w^as no difficult 
matter for Buckingham and his paid subordinates so 
to blacken the name of Edward that it reflected upon 
' his sons. But that Bichard stood by willing to defame 
liis mother, in order to have the crown by a show^ of 
legitimacy revert to himself, would pass belief did 
we not know that like perversions of nature are of fre- 
quent enough recurrence in history to warrant the 
probable truth of this one. 

Eichard's partial betraj^al of sentiment as he whis- 
pers his atrocious lies to Buckingham does not redeem 
him in our eyes. 

1 Act III., Scene 1. 



DR. SHAW'S SERMON. 225 

Yet touch this siDaringly, as 'twere far off, 
Because you know, my lord, my mother lives.^ 

One line here of Eichard's as lie dismisses bis hench- 
men to their several tasks of preparing the people to 
greet him as their king, brings up a point of much 
historic interest. 

Go, Lovell, with all speed to Doctor Shaw.^ 

On June 22d was delivered at St. Paul's Cross, by the 
Rev. Ealph Shaw, a sermon on a text from the Book of 
"Wisdom, " The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall 
not thrive." A report of this sermon w^as made at the 
time by Fabyan, the chronicler, as follows : 

By the mouth of the Eev. Ealph Shaw in the time of his 
sermon was there showed openly that the children of King 
Edward IV. were not legitimate, nor rightful inheritors of 
the crown, with many dis-slanderous words, in preferring of the 
title of the said Lord Protector, and of disannulling of the 
other. 

This was based upon the story which was industriously 
circulated and believed, that Edward had been secretly 
married, before his union with Lady Grey, and that 
this first Avife, undivorced, was alive. Shakespeare in- 
timates in the line just quoted that Dr. Shaw's sermon 
was instigated by Richard, with how much truth is 
not known. 

The course of events is now indicated in the dia- 
logue between Richard and Buckingham, and in the 
famous scene where the former permits his scruples to 
be overcome, and to assume the crown. 

1 Act m., Scenes. ^Ibid. 

15 



226 BUCKINGHAM'S GRAFT, 

Glos, How now, how now, what say the citizens? 
Buck. The citizens are mum, say not a word, 

But like dumb statues or breathing stones 
Stared each on other and looked deadly pale, 
Which when I saw, I reprehended them. 
And asked the mayor what meant this wilful silence. 

The mayor, evidently without relish, addressed the 
mob, and Buckingham continues : 

"When he had done, some followers of mine own, 
At lower end o' the hall, hurled up their caps. 
And some ten voices cried, " God save King Richard ! " 
And thus I took advantage of those few : 
** Thanks, gentle citizens and friends," quoth I. 
' ' This general applause and cheerful shout 
' Argues your wisdom, and your love to Richard." 

Glos. "What tougueless blocks were they. Would they not speak ? 
Will not the mayor, then, and his brethren come ? 

Buck. The mayor is near at hand ; intend some fear ; 
Be not you spoke with, but by mighty suit ; 
And look you, get a prayer book in your hand, 
And stand between two churchmen, good my lord, 
For on that ground, I'll make a- holy descant ; 
And be not easily won to our requests. 
Play the maid's part. Still answer nay, and take it.' 

Now in these passages are indicated two historical 
facts. The people were slow to give up the cause of 
the young princes, and Richard's assumed austerity 
and pious demeanor, as well as his apparent reluctance 
to take the crown offered by his own claquers, were 
played off against the passions skilfully excited among 

1 Act III., Scene?. 



GLOSTER'S SCRUPLES OVERCOME. 227 

the people by tales of the late Edward's gallantry and 
looseness. " Alas ! " cries Eichard, pressed to take the 
crown, 

Alas ! Why should you heap this care on me ? 
I am unfit for state and majesty ; 
I do beseech you, take it not amiss, 
I cannot, nor I will not yield to you. 
Buck. If you refuse it, as in love and zeal 

Loath to depose the child, your brother's son, 

Yet know whether you accept our suit or no, 
Your brother's son shall never reign our king. 
But we will plant some other on the throne, 
To the disgrace and downfall of your house. 
And in this resolution here we leave you. 
Come, citizens, we will entreat no more. 

Glos. Will you enforce me to a world of cares ? 
Call them again. I am not made of stone. 
But penetrable to your kind entreaties. 
Albeit against my conscience and my soul. 

But if black scandal or foul-faced reproach 
Attend the sequel of your imposition, 
Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me 
From all the impure blots and stains thereof ; 
For God doth know and you may jiartly see 
How far I am from the desire of this. ' 

Richard Gloster is now crowned King of England. " In 
the first parliament thereafter," according to Knight, 

" a statute was passed reciting that in a bill presented by 
many lords spiritual and temporal, and others of the commons 
in great multitude, the crown was claimed by Kichardas his 

1 Actni, Scene?. 



228 POPULAR ACQUIESCENCE. 

father's heir, in consequence of a pre-contract of matrimony- 
having been made by Edward IV. with dame Eleanor Butler, 
. . . by which his children became illegitimate, and that 
the line of the Duke of Clarence had been attainted." ^ 



These were the legal grounds whereby Kichard III. 
came into possession of the throne of England. We 
have noted how slowly, and as it were against their 
better judgment, the commons accepted this usurpa- 
tion. Two reasons led them, doubtless, to acquiesce in 
it, once accomplished. One was a loathing of the bare 
idea of another civil war. A generation had grown up 
while the Eoses were tossing above the pikes of St. 
Albans, Towton, Barnet, and Tewkesbury. Men were 
weary of drawing blood from their brethren. Peace at 
any price seemed honorable and the wisest patriotism. 
This is the first reason. It might not have held had 
there been a competent leader on the gTound to dis- 
pute Kichard's crown. The princes were boys. Their 
mother was deprived of the services of her family, all 
the leading spirits among them having been cast into 
prison. There was no Bolingbroke, no Hotspur, no 
Warwick, no Margaret of Anjou. True that far away 
in Brittany was the young Richmond of the House of 
Lancaster, grandson of Henry Y.'s widow, the fair 
Katharine, of whom Henry YI. had said with the pre- 
science of poetry : 

This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss. 
His looks are full of peaceful majesty ; 
His head by nature framed to wear a crown ; 
His hand to wield a sceptre ; and himself 

1 Knight's History, Vol. II., Chapter VIII. , page 166. 



ELIZABETH DENIED HER CHILDREN. 229 

Likely in time to bless a regal throne. 
Make much of him, my lords, for this is he 
Must help you more than you are hurt by me.' 

Riclimond will presently stir into life, but at tlie criti- 
cal moment when Bicliard mounts the throne of Eng- 
land lie is too far off ^d perhaps forgotten, to be a 
factor in the problem. (Both young princes are in the 
Tower, from whence only their bones shall ever emerge 
after more than two centuries of dispute and mystery 
as to their fate. Elizabeth, their mother, may not even 
see them. 

Eliz. Master lieutenant, pray you, by your leave, 

How doth the x^rince and my young son of York? 
Brak. Eight well, dear madam ; by your patience 

I may not suffer you to visit them ; 

The king hath strictly charged the contrary. 
Eliz. The king, who's that ? 
Brak. I mean the Lord Protector. 
Eliz. The Lord protect him from that kingly title. 

Hath he set bounds between their love and me ? 

I am their mother. Who shall bar me from them ? 
Brak. No, madam, no. I may not leave it so. 

I am bound by oath and therefore pardon me.'^ 

Now comes the messenger to Anne, who is with Eliza- 
beth and sympathizing with her, to summon her to 
her coronation, and thus Elizabeth feels the full thrall 
of Margaret's curse. 

" Nor mother, wife, nor England's counted queen." ^ 

1 Henry VI., Part III., Act III., Scene 7. 

2 Act IV., Scene 1. 3 Ibid. 



230 RICHARD AND ANNE CROWNED. 

Once again this widowed mother, bereft of her chil- 
dren, who yet live, flies to the house of God for sanc- 
tuary, pausing but for a moment to utter her pathetic 
adjuration to the Tower which holds her heart's be- 
loved : 

Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes 
Whom envy hath immured within your walls. 
Eough cradle for such pretty ones. 
Eude, ragged nurse, old sullen jjlay fellow 
For tender princes, use my babies well. 
So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell.' 

Gloster's ambition is now attained. He is legally 
seated on the throne, and Anne, daughter of Warwick, 
is crowned his queen. It is always unsafe to infer 
from a ,man's completed ambition, a life-long scheming 
t^ attain it. And to simply read this play, or the 
bare historic facts upon which it is founded, we are 
led to suppose that Richard became a villain almost 
offhand, that seeing the opportunit}^, he seized upon it 
with a remorseless selfishness that counted no cost of 
blood or bitter suffering in others. And this is another 
reason why he appears the monster which he is de- 
picted upon the stage. We see him in the full maturity 
of his guilt. But without going farther than the facts 
will warrant, we may trace in the previous plays a sort 
of evolution of the character which blossomed into this 
evil, tainted, Rose of York. 

Theorists are reasonably fond of tracing the begin- 
ning of his wickedness to the sensitiveness of youth, 
conscious of great powers of mind, encased in a de- 
formed and ugly body. 

J Act IV., Scene 1. . 



GLOSTER'S CHARACTER. 231 

King Henry's sj^eecli expresses what Ricliard seems 
to have thought all the world believed : 

The owl slirieked at thy birth, an evil sign. 

The night crow cried, ahodiug luckless time. 

Dogs howled and hideous tempests shook down trees. 

Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain 

And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope, 

To wit, an undigest, deformed lump.' 

And Gloster gradually took this opinion bitterly to 
heart, and resolved to live accordingly. What men 
expected of him they should have. Without fault of 
his he had been made a sort of physical monster. He 
would be what he seemed. The world should have 
him at its own valuation. 

Then since the heavens have shaped my body so, 
Let hell make crooked my mind to answer it.^ 

At first sensitive and bitterly shy, he broods over it ; 
loathes every one about him, because he thinks him- 
self loathsome to them. Then, as he appreciates his 
own intellectual strength and extraordinary mental 
capacity, he glories in his deformities as having the 
potency of unwelcome surprises for those who look 
down on him. He is facile princeps, after the death of 
Warwick, among the men of the court. We see in 
the play how he twists and turns the strongest of them 
to his will. It is quite conceivable that the idea of 
the throne was not at first present in his wicked schem- 
ings, that held no one sacred, no life secure, no blood 

1 Henry VI. , Part III., Act V., Scene 6. 2 Ibid. 



232 HIS MASTERFUL POWER. 

precious. We remember the pleased, almost startled, 
surprise at his success in the wooing of Anne, and the 
resolutions it induced : 

My dukedom to a beggarly denier 
I do mistake my person all this while. 
Upon my life she finds, although I cannot, 
Myself to be a marvellous proper man. 
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, 
And entertain a score or two of tailors, 
To study fashions to adorn my body. 
Since I am crept in favor with myself, 
I will maintain it with some little cost. ^ 

Humorously exaggerated as this is, we trace the idea in 
Eichard's mind and see how he carried it into effect as 
he mingled in the politics of the times. He finds him- 
self able to lead, control, master, people. He will do 
this wherever it leads him, in revenge for nature's 
deprivation of those physical adornments which aid- 
ed other men. Others used their natural parts and 
beauties to advance themselves. He will show ad- 
vancement in spite of, even by means of, his deformi- 
ties. (Note that scene in the council chamber at the 
arrest of Hastings, where he displays his withered 
arm.) 

The wooing of Anne is thus a part and parcel of the 
evolution of Richard's character along these lines. So 
he surveyed the court, and measured the resources of 
its factions. In pure malignity, he pushed the dagger 
of his spite into first this one, then that, until he per- 
ceived the crown glittering before him. It came in his 
way, and he took it, grimly smiling doubtless at the 

' Act I. , Scene 8. 



BUCKINGHAM'S DEFECTION. 233 

thought of what Warwick would have thought, or 
Henry YI., or Edward IV. 

But once gained, there is a thorn in this crown. 
"^Ha, am I King ? 'Tis so, but Edward lives." That 
is disposed of without much trouble. The princes are 
slain and their bodies buried, only to be resurrected 
in comparatively modern times. But in this incident 
Shakespeare falls into a mistake concerning Bucking- 
ham, and so often an historical mistake which becomes 
a clever dramatic triumph. Buckingham's falling 
away was not on account of Richard's desire to have 
the young princes slain. It is one of the tangled mys- 
teries of history, why he did fall away so soon, and after 
being loaded with benefits from the free hand in which 
he had helped to place the sceptre of England. But 
he was not the man to have uttered words at Richard's 
first suggestion of the murder that should cause tlie 
wily plotter to exclaim : 

High reaching Buckingham grows circumsiDect.^ 

But he was the man, as Shakespeare hints again, when 
the king grows cold toward him, to resent not having a 
full share of the spoils of the usurpation. 

My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise, 
For which your honor and your faith is pawned. 

I am thus bold to put your grace in mind 
Of what you promised me.^ 

And the king's dry, cold sneer : 

I am not in the giving vein to-day, 
1 Act IV., Scene 3. 2 ibid. 



234 RICHMOND ON THE SEAS. 

probably expressed liis impatience at the importunities 
of one for whom he considered he had done enough 
and rewarded amply. 

Buckingham probably failed to receive the consider- 
ation he thought his due. At all events, shortly after 
the coronation of Richard and Anne he is up in arms, 
and in active correspondence with the Earl of Eich- 
mond, who sets forth from Brittany, but by a storm is 
beaten back from the coast. The unfortunate Buck- 
ingham, deprived of his ally, is taken prisoner, and had 
to his share what he had so often awarded others, and 
on the scaffold cries : 

Tims Margaret's curse falls heavy on my neck. 

" When he," quoth she, " shall split thy heart with sorrow, 

Kemember Margaret was a proi^hetess." ' 

And now Richmond is on the seas, and his star begins 
to rise. He is the last living direct heir of the Lan- 
castrian line which was set aside when Edward IV. of 
York came to the throne. Henry, Earl of Bichmond, 
was the son of Edmund, who was the son of Owen 
Tudor and Katherine, the widow of Henry Y. He 
was also the lineal descendant, by Katherine Swyn- 
ford, of John of Gaunt. He thus inherited in the 
Lancastrian line, although this line was debarred 
by Parliament from the throne. Queen Anne had 
died and her infant son. Bichard was again " him- 
self alone," liot without suspicion, say the Chroni- 
cles, that he had murdered his wife. Before this he 
had paid such attention to his niece Elizabeth, Ed- 
ward's daughter, as to create scandalous talk at court. 

I Act v., Sc^iel. 



ELIZABETH HOODWINKS RICHARD. 235 

The poet represents him truly at this juncture, with a 
rising cloud in the sky of his prosperity, seeking mar- 
riage with his niece, in order probably to so unite the 
house of York upon the throne as to prevent the 
possibility of being disturbed by the last scion of 
Lancaster. 

There is much dispute about Shakespeare's inten- 
tion in that scene where Eichard woos the young 
princess through her mother. History assures us 
both that Edward's Queen consented to this match, 
and at the same time had pledged her daughter's 
hand to the Earl of Eichmond, which was an ideal 
political marriage from the standpoint of the nobles 
who hated Richard, and wished well to England. In 
the play, after a scene of cursing and cajolery very 
similar to that of the wooing of Anne, Elizabeth ap- 
pears to yield to Eichard's blandishments. We need 
not believe the poet intended it for more than seeming. 
He here means to indicate how Eichard's intellectual 
cunning was beginning to o'erreach itself. The snare 
into which Anne had fallen he spread for Elizabeth, 
and fell into himself. The Queen hoodwinked him 
and intended to. " Eelenting fool, and shallow chang- 
ing woman," as Eichard thought her, she was then in 
correspondence with Eichmond, and destined once 
more to see happy days in the reign of her daughter 
as England's queen. Eichard held a kingdom in his 
hand ; swayed the councils even of his enemies ; tossed 
human souls into eternity without effort ; but he did 
not see into this wronged woman's ruse, nor know that 
love is stronger than arms and scaffolds. 

Eichmond is at the gates of his heritage'. He has 



236 VISIOJSrS IN THE NIGHT. 

not a large army. A few of the discontented nobles 
come to greet liim. The friends of Edward lY. come 
out of their sorrowful retirement to gather about a 
Lancastrian who is preferable at last to their own 
White Rose. The ex-queen's friends flock to him, but 
the people are comparatively indifferent. There is no 
great uprising of the commons either for Richard or 
for Richmond. The people indeed are curiously and 
sullenly indifferent, except those who, with remnants 
of feudal attachment feel they are fighting the battle of 
their chiefs. Richard gathers his armies, also small in 
number. He holds his rival but cheaply, and calls him 
" Shallow Richmond." 

It is the night before the battle of Bosworth Field.^ 
The handling of this scene of the last act reminds us 
somewhat of the eve of Agincourt. Now we see Rich- 
mond confident that he is God's captain, yet alert in 
preparation against the wiles and stratagems of the 
" wretched, bloody, and usurping boar." Now we be- 
hold Richard, restless, anxious, " I will not sup to- 
night," drinking great bowls of wine, without somehow 
" that alacrity of spirit and cheer of mind he was wont 
to have." The busy preparations are all made. The 
night falls. Richard and Richmond sleep. To both 
come visions in that night before the day of fate. 
The poet may not be quarrelled with for introducing 
ghosts upon the mimic stage. The moral raison d'etre 
of these spirits, who rise first to one and then to the 
other of the leaders, is unquestionable. In Richmond's 
dreams he is comforted and strengthened by assurance 
that his course is just. In Richard's he is tormented 

1 Act v.. Scene 3. 



B08W0RTH FIELD. 237 

and disturbed by the guilty deeds of his past, which 
now rise in judgment upon him. Those ghosts did 
truly represent the moral attitude of the two leaders in 
the last struggle between the houses of York and Lan- 
caster. 

God and good angels fight on Richmond's side 
And Richard falls in all his height of pride.' 

No use of soliloquies could here accomplish the end 
aimed at, to place the moral strength and weakness of 
this struggle before us. The feeble outburst of Kichard 
as he rouses from his crime-haunted sleep, is evidence 
of this. That speech beginning, " Give me another 
horse, bind up my wounds," ^ is wretched as compared 
with former soliloquies. It seems a poor bit of actor's 
fustian. The ghosts, on the other hand, may be inartis- 
tic, as is often objected, but they are powerful drama- 
tic auxiliaries. Through their wailing moans we hear 
the last note of cold despair beginning to sweep across 
the soul of the usurping Richard. The memory of 
every crime lies heavy on his soul, as next day he met 
Richmond in the shock of battle, unnerving his cour- 
age and palsying his arm. 

The battle of Bosworth Field ended in the victory 
of Richmond, who was triumphantly crowned king as 
Henry VII. It ended the wars of the Roses, and the 
life of the last Plantagenet King. He dies like a 
soldier, nobler in that moment than when he had 
reigned over all England. "Then truly," says the old 
Chronicle, " in a very moment, the residue all fled, and 

1 Act v., Scenes. 2 ibid. 



238 WOMEN OF THE PLAT. 

king Kichard, alone, was killed fighting manfully in the 
thickest press of his enemies." So ended the wars of 
the Eoses. Richmond was crowned king, upon the 
field of battle. Shortly after he was ratified in his 
prerogatives and kingdom by Parliament. He mar- 
ried Elizabeth of York, and the blood of the rival 
houses mingled in the veins of their son Henry VIII. 
Shakespeare has not touched with his pen the period 
between Eichard III. and Henry VIII., but in his 
last chronicle play with the latter as its titular hero, 
he completes the story begun with the reign of King 
John. 

One cannot turn from the tragedy of Eichard III. 
with a true regard for its historic ii^nportance, without 
a word as to its women characters. Anne's sorrows 
and fate redeem in the eyes of sentiment her degrad- 
ing folly. The old Duoliess, m'other of Eichard, is 
well sustained both dramatically and historically. 

Elizabeth, queen of Edward, mother of the princes 
of the Tower, is admirable. She may have been a 
light w^oman and indiscreet. She may have forwarded 
too busily the fortunes of her family, but this is a 
trait of human, not especially of woman, nature, and 
has its noble side. We must maintain that she over- 
reached Eichard in the end, by the keen unscrupulous- 
ness of a loving woman when those she loves are in 
peril. For her deception and ruse of acquiescence, Ave 
may have great charity. 

Margaret of Anjou, restless shade of a dissonant 
and bloody past, remains a heroine. She alone, always 
and to his face withstands tlie powerful, dominant 
hunchback, " hell's black intelligencer." Even Eichard 



PROGRESS OF LITERATURE. 239 

must have admired her. " Bear with me," she cries 
not only to the Queen, but down the centuries it is her 
frank appeal to the judgment of history. 

Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge? 
And now I cloy me with behokling it.' 

There are few instances of a passion more detestable 
in the heart of one more excusable for nursing it. 

Great progress was making during the easy years 
of Edward, and the perturbed reign of Eichard, in 
the development of literature. The Woodvilles, fam- 
ily of Edw^ard's queen, encouraged learning and were 
patrons of Caxton, the first English printer, who, under 
an overruling Providence, did more by his art than 
kings by their swords, to make England great. After 
the preceding pages, it seems strange to connect the 
familiar names with peaceful arts. Yet the unfortun- 
ate Rivers was an accomplished author and translator, 
and the first English book printed was dedicated to 
"false fleeting perjured Clarence." 

Even Richard has made letters his debtor, for in his 
reign was passed a tariff law expressly excepting from its 
provisions " any maner of bokes, written dl' imprynted." 

With the spread of books, written or printed, went 
ixiri jjcissu the intelligence of the commons. The peo- 
ple turned over the fluttering pages of Bible and 
Chronicle to learn many lessons for present and future. 
The minds of England's peasantry and minor gentry, 
had been stagnant, until into the pools ol standing 
ivater w^ere poured the fresh streams of poet, prophet, 
chronicler. 

1 Act IV., Scene 4. 



240 ENGLAND OF THE TUDORS. 

Henry Tudor looked out upon a new land as he 
lifted his eyes from Bosworth Field. The Baron was 
there, the Churchman was there, but there too was a 
swarming multitude who uttered the voice of a third 
power, more potent to influence kings than priest or 
noble, the power of the Common People, tilling the 
soil as of old, but reading their books as not of old, 
their Bible chief of all, and learning the lessons of 
self-government, self-restraint, and self-respect. 



HENEY VIII. 

There is no other kuowii play with this reign as itB 
theme from which Shakespeare seems to have bor* 
rowed. " The Life of Wolsey," by Cavendish (in- 
chided in Holinshed), and Fox's "Book of Martyrs," 
were principal sources of information. Many passages 
are transcribed almost word for word from these orig- 
inals. 



16 



CHEONOLOGY OF THE EEIGN OF HENEY VII. 

BEING THE INTERVAL BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY OF RICHARD 
III. AND HENRY VIII. 

1486. Henry VII. marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of 
Edward IV., thus uniting the rival claims of the Yorkists and 
Lancastrians. 

1487. Lambert Simnel, pretending to be the young Earl of 
Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence, invades the king- 
dom and is defeated. 

1492. War with France. 

1492-99. Perkin Warbeck, pretending to be the Duke of York, 
who was believed to have been murdered in the Tower, 
carried on a desultory warfare in support of his claims to the 
throne. He is finally executed. Arthur, son of Henry and 
Elizabeth, married to Katharine of Aragon. 

1502. On the death of Arthur, a contract of marriage is made 
between Lis widow and his brother, afterward Henry VIII. 

1509. Death of Henry VIL 



243 



CHRONOLOGY OF HENRY VIII. 

FROM HIS ACCESSION, 1509, UNTIL 1533. 

1509. Henry ascends the throne. Marriage between the King, 
aged eighteen, and Katharine of Aragon, aged twenty-six. 

1513. Henry defeats the French in the battle of the Si3urs. 
English defeat the Scotch at Flodden Field. 

1514. Peace with France. 

1515. Wolsey created Cardinal and Lord Chancellor. 
1517. Wolsey made Papal Legate. 

1520. Charles V. of Spain, and Emperor, makes a visit of state 
to Henry. Henry makes a visit of state to Francis I. of 

France. The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 

SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY BEGINS. 

1521. Impeachment and execution of Buckingham. Henry 
writes a book against Luther and receives the title of " De- 
fender of the Faith " from Pope Leo X. 

1523. Disagreement between Wolsey and the Commons. 
1525. Forced loans resented by the i)eople, and the policy 
abandoned by Henry. 

1527. First doubts raised as to the validity of Henry's mar- 
riage with Katharine. Henry submits the question of divorce 
to Pope Clement VII. 

1528. Wolsey and Campeggio appointed commissioners by 
the Pope to try the cause of the divorce. 

1529. Queen Katharine appeals to Rome. Wolsey deprived 
of his dignities by the King. 

1530. Wolsey apprehended for treason. His death. 

1531. Katharine withdraws from the court. 

1532. Anne Boleyn made Marchioness of Pembroke and 
privately married to Henry. Act of Parliament forbidding 
appeals of any sort to be made to Rome. 

1533. Cranmer made Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer 
declares the marriage with Katharine null, and that with 
Anne Boleyn legal. Birth of Elizabeth, afterwards Queen. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

HENEY VIII. — THE ENGLISH KEFOEMATION. 

Position of this play as epilogue to the series. — Henry VIII. unites the 
houses of Lancaster and York, — In his reign, civil-political strife 
succeeded by civil-ecclesiastical strife. — The significant period covered 
by the play. — Three tragical events, elaborately interwoven, form the 
centres of dramatic treatment. — (I.) The execution of the Duke of 
Buckingham. — (II.) The divorce of Katharine of Aragon. — (III.) 
The disgrace and fall of Cardinal Wolscy.— The Reformation writ 
large over the whole play. — The Field of the Cloth of Gold. — 
Contempt for the French. — Growing hatred against Wolsey. — Bucking- 
ham the scapegoat of this feeling. — His apprehension. — His real 
offence — His execution. — The people see in him a victim of Wolsey' s 
ambition. — Origin of the divorce question still in a haze of historic 
doubt. — Partisans settle it off-hand, — Students do not. — Henry's three- 
cornered dilemma in his relations with the Pope, the Emperor (Katha- 
rine's nephew), and the King of France. — Interwoven with these Wol- 
sey's ambitious designs on the papal tiara — Henry's alleged scruples 
as to validity of his marriage with Katharine. — His conscience and 
Anne Boleyn. — Wolsey at first in favor of, then opposed to, the divorce. 
— Shuffling of all parties in the matter of the divorce. — Henry cuts the 
knot by breaking with Rome. — Cranmer appears. — Marriage and coro- 
nation of Anne. — The poet's treatment of Henry and the divorce. — 
Wolsey's fate grows out of the divorce proceedings, and the shadow of 
this great man is over the whole play. — His autocratic sway. — His ex- 
tortions. — Three strands in the cord of his fate. — The rising tide of the 
reformation had its effects also. — Wolsey and Katharine. — Henry dis- 
graces the once powerful subject. — His submission, repentance, and 
death. — The dominant note of these stirring times, nationalism, not 
protestantism. — Cranmer and Gardiner. — Henry's break with Rome 
more political than religious. — End of the play with the baptism of 
Elizabeth and a propliecy of England's future glory. 

The last of tlie English historical plays, and in many 
respects the most complete and picturesque in its per- 



UNION OF YORK AND LANCASTER. 245 

trayal of the period it covers. It was without doubt 
the last of the chronicles in order of composition, as 
well as in historic sequence. Its probable date, from 
internal evidence, was about 1603, before the death of 
Elizabeth, which occurred in the last of March that 
year. Malone dates it in 1601, Skottowe in 1603. And 
although most modern commentators agree upon a 
later date, no two fix the same. The reasons for hold- 
ing to an early date are enlarged upon in the Appen- 
dix.' 

As already noted, after the exhausting struggle of 
York and Lancaster, ending with the battle of Bos- 
worth Field, Henry YII. came to the throne of Eng- 
land and united the warring factions by his marriage 
with Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward lY. In 
their son Henry VIII. the people sav/ the blood of 
York and Lancaster mingling for the first time. The 
long duel was over, and England became once more 
a homogeneous nation, under a king who could be 
claimed by no faction, the founder of what was prac- 
tically a ncAV epoch for the English race. As John is 
shown to have been the first of English rulers to sepa- 
rate the nation from continental entanglement (barring 
those after e]3hemeral conquests which gave only a 
titular sovereignty over France to English kings), so 
Henry was the first to unite the English people among 
themselves, to stop the bloody flux of civil wars, and 
to lay the foundation, albeit amidst confusion and sor- 
rows, of a happier and more prosperous national life. 

These were the bright dreams of nobles and com- 
mons wdien Henry came to the throne, a handsome, 

• Appendix, p. 299. 



246 HENRY'S ALTERED CHARACTER. 

gallant youth in 1509. But when the- play of Shake- 
speare opens twelve yeiXrs later, in 1521, we find these 
hopes disappointed. 

Times have changed. ^ Henry is no longer a generous 
lad looking for honest guidance and submitting to wise 
counsellors, but a headstrong, arrogant man, now 
swayed by the meanest favorites who would pander to 
his tastes ; again refusing all interference in his plans 
whatsoever ; cold-blooded toward his best friend^, re- 
lentless in dealing with his enemies. Such favorites 
as he has are looked^ upon with suspicion by the lords 
of his court, and the abuse of taxation has aroused the 
masses to protest against exaction. We are introduced 
at once to an entourage of jealousy, avarice, vaulting 
ambition, and self-seeking. Tiie air is impure; the 
surroundings are tawdry ; the motives of most of the 
dramatis personam are for the great jDart sordid. 

The prologue to the play deftly indicates this, and 
is a keynote to the whole well worth study. It begins 
with these lines : 

I come no more to make yon langh : things now 
' That bear a weighty and a serions brow, 
^ Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe : 

Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow 
"We now present. ... 

It ends with these : 

' Think ye see 
The very persons of our noble story, 
As they were living ; think you see them great 
And followed with the general throng and sweat 
Of thousand friends ; then in a moment, see 
How soon this mightiness meets misery. > ^ 

1 Vide Prologue to Henry VIII. 



CHIEF EVENTS OF THE PLAY. 247 

Tills last line gives a key-note to the play. In the 
lives of many of the characters " mightiness met mis- 
ery." So also with the nation at large. The poet 
has cleverly brought his drama to an end in the bap- 
tism of Elizabeth, as a prophecy of how in her reign 
might should conquer misery, and he breaks off not 
too soon in the march of events ; for the succeeding 
years of his titular hero's reign would not have borne 
transference to the stage. 

There are three events, all tragic in their nature, 
around which the action of the play revolves. All are 
historic, and there is but little deviation, even in de- 
tails, from the actual history as recorded in Cavendish's 
" Life of Wolsey,'^ from which the poet took not only 
his facts, but occasionally his language. 

The Cranmer incident in Act V. will be found in 
Fox's " Book of Martyrs," and is an almost literal re- 
production from its pages. These three historic occur- 
rences which give vertebrate consistency to the play 
are (I.) The Execution of Buckingham. (11.) Thp 
Divorce of Katharine ; and (III.) The Fall of Wolsey. 
In addition, although there is very little direct refer- 
ence to the wide-spread prevalence of the new religi- 
ous doctrines, we are carried by the action of the play 
over that important and troubled period which may be 
called the threshold of the English Eeformation. It" 
is a singular coincident fact, that the year 1521, in 
which the play opens, marked the publication of Hen- 
ry's celebrated book against Luther and his heresy, 
which w^on for hirii from the Pope the title " Defender 
of the Faith ; " and that in 1533, the year with Avhose 
happenings the play closes, were enacted those acts of 



248 FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, 

Parliament which cut off England forever as a spirit- 
ual fief of the Eoman See. 

The dramatic use made of the accusation and arrest 
of Bjickingham presents in strongly drawn outline the 
England of the pre-Eeformation period. 

We have first an indication of that semi-barbaric 
taste of even cultivated monarchs, for such displays as 
that of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, when 

To-day tlie French 
All cHnquant, all in gold, like heatlien gods, 
Slione do\Vn the English ; and, to-morrow they 
Made Britain India ; every man that stood 
Showed like a mine.' .... 

So Norfolk describes this celebrated pageant, and in 
the conversation which ensues, creeps out the growing 
hatred of Cardinal Wolsey's despotic policy in state 
affairs, while it is more than hinted that the glittering 
display was managed by him to further selfish ends. 
The sober second sense of England is expressed to 
the effect that such stupendous shows, however grati- 
fying to the national pride, were not in the end worth 
the price paid, but were " purchased at a superfluous 
rate." The treaty made^ with France at this time was 
soon broken, and there were not a few who made bold 
to charge the "o'er great Cardinal" with the rupture, 
again for selfish ends, even* as the result of a bargain 
wit|i Charles the Emperor.^ For purposes of the 

^ Act I., Scene 1. 

2 The introduction of Wolsey's name so early in the play, as influencing 
the course of events, is a happy dramatic foreshadowing of the influence 
which this single great character is to have on all the persons and in- 
cidents involved. Wolsey is as essential a personalty to the drama of 
Henry VIII. as Hamlet to the tragedy Avhich bears his name. 



BUGKINOHAM'8 CONDEMNATION. 249 

drama the strongest expressions of popular feeling* 
are pnt in Buckingham's mouth, as " This top proud 
fellow ... I do know to be corrupt and trea- 
sonous," and 

He (the emperor) privily 
Deals with our cardinal ; and as I trow 
Which I do well ; for I am sure the emperor 
Paid e'er he promised ; whereby his suit was granted 
Ere it was asked.' 

But this was the sentiment of the majority of the 
-proud lords who clustered about . Henry's throne, and 
Buckingham is the dramatic puppet to give it voice, 
because he v^as the one to suffer the vengeance of the 
Cardinal, as a sort of scapegoat to warn the rest that 
"Wolsey was not to be trifled Avitli. 

Buckingham was arrested for treason,Hried, and con- 
demned to death. The njain charge against him was 
a too free boasting of what he would do on coming to 
the throne in case ' of the failure of issue to Henry.- 
There were confused allegations of treasonable remarks 
concerning the King's own person also, based upon the 
confession of a discharged servant. It is probable 
that Buckingham was involved in some of the discon- 
tents of the period, and as the next male heir to the 
throne, his name would have probably been used in 
every Cave of AduUam gathering of those discontented 
times. This would account for much, but it is. ques- 
tionable whether he Avould ev^r have been executed, 
had it not been that he was head and front of the op- 

1 Act I., Scene 1. 

He was the next heir if Henry died without issue, being the line? 
'scendant of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, seventh son of Edward III. 



250 A VICTIM OF THE GARBINAL. 

position to Wolsey. High born liimself, of royal de- 
scent, with the possible contingency of the throne be- 
fore him, he could ill brook the insolence and court 
influence of the " venom mouthed butcher's cur," who 
by his rise from lowly surroundings to the pitch of 
prime favorite, had made a " beggar's book outworth 
a noble's blood." 

Shakespeare correctly represents the. papular feel- 
ing to have been with Buckiugliam. Perhaps this was 
partly from the sentimental pity which always accom- 
panies the sharp misfortunes of a gifted and gallant 
leader, and partly from the well-known fact that he 
was convicted on the testimony of his own household, 
who thus basely betrayed the indiscreet words and 
actions uttered and expressed in the assumed safety of 
domestic confidence, " a most unnatural and faithless 
service." But chiefly the people deplored the Duke's 
taking off because they saw in him a hapless victim of 
the great Cardinal, whom they were learning to hate 
and fear. The two gentlemen who meet and ex- 
change opinions over the trial, express the common 
opinion. 

2d Gent. Certainly, 

The cardinal is the end of tliis. 

1st Gent, 'Tis likely, 

By all conjectures ; first Kildare's attainder, 
Then dejmty of Ireland ; who, removed, 
Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too, 
Lest he should helj:* his father. 

. . . This is noted, 
And generally, whoever the king favors 
The cardinal will instantly find employment 
And far enou^'h from court too. 



KATHARINE'S APPEARANCE. 251 

2d Gent. All the commons 

Hate liim perniciously, and o' my conscience 
Wish him ten fathoms deep.' 

In Buckingliam's farewell speech, a splendid and 
pathetic outburst, the poet puts in the Duke's mouth 
words which he would hardly under the circumstances 
have used, but particularly prophetic of Wolsey's 
downfall, and finely indicative of the truth. After say- 
ing he heartily forgives those who sought his death, 
he continues: 

Yet let them look they glory not in mischief, 
Nor build their evils on the graves of great men ; 
For then my guiltless blood must cry against them."-' 

These incidents of the accusation and trial of the 
Duke of Buckingham are made to foreshadow the course 
of future events which held in their last analysis the 
fate of both Katharine and Wolsey. As over the 
whole play the latter may be seen to throw the sombre 
shadow of his influence, so throughout the greater 
part of it, Katharine is set forth as a sort of glowing 
foil to his ambitious schemes. 

Historically out of place as Katharine's plea ^ for 
the heavily taxed people is, it was probably substanti- 
ally true, and another evidence that the poet grasped 
the truth of history while not always keeping to its 
letter. Katharine's appearance as the accuser of Wol- 
sey here, is evidently made for purposes dramatic. It 
is a striking picture. The Queen secure yet in her 
wifely dignity, pure and spotless in her matronly in- 
tegrity, strong in her position as wife of a great prince 

1 Act II. , Scene 1. 2 ibij. 3 Act I. , Scene 2. 



252 OPPRESSION OF THE COMMONS. 

who grants her request before it is uttered, making- 
plea for the oppressed commons, and charging the in- 
iquity of unfair and burdensome exactions upon the 
first subject of the realm, and most powerful minister 
of state. This is the first indication in the play, and 
perhaps in point of actual time, where Henry traverses 
the action of his trusted cardinal. 

Knight infers that Henry knew of the exactions, but 
that, after the manner of kings, he threw the blame on 
his minister, who took it humbly to himself as became a 
faithful servant. Shakespeare would have us suppose 
that Wolsey was the real source of 

. . . The subject's grief 

. . . Wliicli compels from each 

The sixth part of his substance to be levied 

Without delay." ^ 

And in furtherance of this he conveys the reasonable 
idea that kings must be unknowing to a great deal of 
their minister's transactions. "By my life," exclaims 
Hendry, " this is against our pleasure." ^ The truth 
probably lies between the two. When Henry wanted 
money for his wars or his pleasures, he notified Wol- 
sey, and so long as no complaints reached his royal 
ears, was careless of how his purse Avas filled. We 
must, however, bear in mind that Shakespeare's de- 
lineation of Heury's character was softened down as to 
its worst side by the fact that it was probably written 
for Elizabeth's eye ; and Elizabeth had quite too much 
of her father's blood in her veins, to allow one of her 
Majesty's Players to make too free with the reputa- 
tion of her Majesty's father. 

1 Act I., Scenes. 2 ibid. 



TREATMENT OF THE DIVORCE. 253 

Henry VIII. was a great king and Wolsey a great 
minister, but of the two Wolsey was the better man 
even before his downfaU. Shakespeare makes him the 
worse, although he redeems at once the Cardinal's 
character and the truth of history, in the scenes de- 
picting the last days of Wolsey's life. 

The central point of the play, and perhaps the tour 
deforce of Shakespeare's genius, is his treatment of 
the divorce of Katharine of Aragon, for twenty ye^rs 
" true and loyal wife " of England's king. Let the 
historic setting of Shakespeare's time be recalled, the 
better to demonstrate this opinion. The reigning 
sovereign was Henry's daughter Elizabeth by Anne 
Boleyn, for whose sake he had divorced his first wife. 
Elizabeth Tudor was an object of popular love and 
admiration. Mary, her predecessor, daughter of 
Henry by the divorced Katharine, was as eagerly de- 
tested. The state of religious parties was by no means 
conducive to partisansMp in a stage play performed 
upon the public boards. The old faith was still the 
fond memory and passionate belief of many. The 
Established Church was the bulwark of national de-. 
fence against Spain and France, and the majority of 
Englishmen were as loyal to it as to the state, in many 
cases doubtless for the same reason. The Puritan 
movement was deepening and strengthening, frowning 
alike on missal and prayer-book. \ 

For a public composed of these elements Shake- 
speare wrote on the most delicate of all subjects — the 
revolt of England from the papal supremacy, the oc- 
casion of which, although not the cause, was Henry's 
quarrel with the Pope in the matter of the divorce of 



254 DOMESTIC LIFE OF HENRY VIII. 

Katharine. To say that Shakespeare accomplished 
his task without giving offence in any quarter, is much. 
But he did more, in that, with one possible exception, 
he so used the materials at his hand as to depart in no 
essential point from the truth of history. The excep- 
tion is in his treatment of the character of Henry. In 
spite of Mr. Fronde's learned and brilliant special plea, 
the student of history, unbiassed by religious prej- 
udice or national pride, can have but one judgment on 
the Hf e of Henry YIII. That dastard domestic life 
beginning with the divorce of Katharine, is marked by 
the sad names of Anne Boleyn, beheaded ; Jane Sey- 
mour, dying in child-birth ; Anne of Cleves, divorced ; 
Catharine Howard, beheaded ; and Catharine Parr, who 
survived him. This is a heavy record. But added to 
it must be the cruelty of heart which suffered him to 
discard without remorse one by one his most trusted 
and faithful servants, and the savagery of disposition 
which made his last breath a death-warrant. By the 
farthest stretch of charity, we may only give Shake- 
speare the credit of trying to reflect the spirit of his age 
regarding Henry, and that the subversion of the pa- 
pal power in England was considered by Englishmen 
sufiicient to wipe away all scores against the moral 
abasement of the king who was instrumental, what- 
ever his motives, in establishing the church and nation 
on the strong foundation of autonomous government.^ 
Through the tortuous web of these delicate facts the 

* It is only fair to the poet also, to observe that the course of his drama 
does not touch upon the period of Henry's most conspicuous villainy. There 
is room for the apologist of Henry up to the birth of Elizabeth. There is 
none after the beheading of Anne. 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 255 

poet deftly picked his way. No resentment could rise 
in Elizabeth's heart against the treatment of Anne, 
Boleyn or Katharine. They are not pitted against each 
other in the play. The one is a picture of joyous and 
happy youth, drinking the first drop of a delicious 
cup ; the other is presented in the dignity of conscious 
innocence and nobly borne grief. Elizabeth's legiti- 
macy remains unquestioned, while Katharine's request 
to be buried as a queen obtains. 

When I am dead, good wench, 
Let me be used with honor : strew me over 
With maiden flowers, that all the w^orld may know 
I was a chaste wife to my grave : embalm me ; 
Then lay me forth, although unqueened, yet like 
A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me. 
I can no more.' 

The great question of the divorce, although bruited 
in 1527, was not completed until after Wolsey's death. 
Yet it was so intertwined with his fall from power and 
the king's grace, that it must be considered next now 
in order of events. The origin of it is still, after three 
centuries and a half, wrapped in mystery. 

The political situation, and Henry's relation with 
the pope, and Charles of Spain, also emperor, must 
first be noted, and underlying all these, the ambitious 
plans of Wolsey, which affected them all. The Pope 
Clement was bound to Henry for the latter's services 
as Defender of the Faith, and a strong arm to be re- 
lied upon to help put down the new doctrines, which 
were fast spreading over Europe. But Wolsey had 
been a candidate for the papal tiara, which Clement 

1 Act IV., Scene 2. 



256 RUMORS OF THE DIVORGE. 

had secured, and his personal feelings were not friendly 
toward his successful rival. 

Charles of Spain, who was the nephew of Henry's 
wife, had assisted Clement to the papal chair, and had 
failed to make some (perhaps promised) recompense 
to Wolsey for his disappointment. The first reference 
of the play to the matter is given in a conversation be- 
tween two gentlemen anent the arrest of the Duke of 
Buckingham, referring to certain public rumors. 

Is^ Gentleman. . . . Did you not of late days hear 

A buzzing of a separation between the king and Katharine ? 

2d Gentleman. . . . Yes, but it held not : 

For when the king once heard it, out of anger 
He sent command to the Lord Mayor straight 
To stop the rumor. ^ 

Wolsey is at once connected with the matter (which 
connection is given more prominence than it deserved 
because of Shakespeare's desire to shield Henry so far 
as possible). 

'Tis the cardinal, 
And merely to revenge him on the emperor 
For not bestowing on him at his asking 
The Archbishopric of Toledo."^ 

Now as an historical fact the first known suggestion 
of the divorce arose in the alleged conscientious 
scruples of Henry over the legitimacy of his marriage 
with Katharine, because she had been previously mar- 
ried to his brother Arthur, who died. 

It was a point brought forth by the Bishop of 

1 Act II., Scene 1. -Ibid. 



HENRY'S CONSGIENGE. 257 

Tarbes, early in 1527, in the course of negotiations 
toucliiog the marriage of Mary (Henry's daughter by 
Katharine) to the son of the French king. This envoy 
" questioned the validity of the pope's dispensation, and 
therefore of the marriage, and consequently Mary's 
legitimacj^" This may well have touched Henry's 
pride, and we are called upon to believe his statement 
that it also touched his conscience : 

My conscience first received a tenderness, 

Scruple and prick, on certain si3eeches uttered 

By the Bishop of Bayonne, then French ambassador, 

"Who had been hither sent on the debating 

A marriage, twixt the Duke of Orleans and 

Our daughter Mary.^ 

This whole speech of Henry's, too long to be here 
quoted, is singularly true in detail of what actually 
happened. Illuminated by the genius of the dramatist 
the dry facts present a striking picture of what Henry 
may have passed through in what he claims to have 
been a mental struggle that gave to him " many a groan- 
ing throe." The popular judgment, however, as to the 
origin of Henry's " mazed considerings," which with a 
deference to the well-known facts Shakespeare has 
allowed himself to indicate here and there through- 
out the play, and which has been practically accepted 
as the judgment of history, barring Mr. Froude, is 
summed up as follows : 

Lord Cham. It seems the marriage with his brother's wife 
Has crept too near his conscience. 
Suffolk. No, his conscience 

Has crept too near another lady.^ 
> Act II., Scene 4. 2 Act II., Scene 2. 

17 



258 POPULAR IMPRESSION OF HENRY. 

After AVolsey began to fight shy of bringing the di- 
vorce to a consummation, the cause of his zeal to pre- 
vent, and Henry's to proceed, was plain to all eyes. 

For if 
It [tlie divorce] does take place " I do," quoth he, " perceive 
My king is tangled in affections to 
A creature of the queen's, Anne Bullen." ' 

Among the throng who witness the coronation of Anne 
is one sturdy gentleman who declares : 

Sir, as I have a soul she is an angt 1 ; 

Our king has all the Indes in his arms, 

And more, and richer, when he strains that lady. 

I cannot blame his conscience.^ 

Mild, gentle, and womanly as Katharine is, in her in- 
terview with Wolsey and Campeius (Campeggio), when 
they endeavor to move her to consent to the divorce 
procedings, she exclaims : 

Can you think, lords, 
That any Englishman dare give me counsel, 
Or be a known friend 'gainst his highness' pleasure 
(Though he be grown so desperate to be honest) ? ^ 

The fine scorn of this thrust at the king's troubled 
conscience is a touch of genius. But in the light of 
the king's own action of marrying Anne before the 
decree of divorce was pronounced, what more can be 
said in support of the conscientious twinge. The mar- 
riage took place about St. Paul's day, January 25, 
1533. The divorce was pronounced May 23d, four 

» Act III., Scene 3. =^ Act IV., Scene 1. ^ Act III., Scene 1. 



WOLSEY'S ACTIVITY. 259 

months later. Elizabeth was born September 7th. 
These dates are the condemnation of Henry, and per- 
haps also the condemnation of Anne. 

About the time of the first whispering of the divorce 
Wolsej, as already noted, was the enemy of Katha- 
rine's nephew, Charles of Spain, and was seeking close 
alliance with the King of France. Whatever his rea- 
son was — probably he had his eye upon the papal suc- 
cession again — the humbling of Charles through Katha- 
rine Avas a sweet morsel to him, and his hoped-for 
marriage of the divorced king to the Duchess of Alen- 
9on (Francis's sister) would strengthen his influence at 
the French court. 

Norfolk and the Lord Chamberlain sum up the 
public estimate of Wolsey's activity in the matter of 
the divorce as follows : 

Nor. How holily be works in all this business, 

And with what zeal ; for now he has cracked the lea^^ne 
Between us and the emperor, the queen's great nephew. 
He dives into the king's soul, and there scatters 
Dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience, 
Fears and despairs, and all these for his marriage. 

Cham. 'Tis most true. 

These news are everywhere ; every tongue speaks them, 
And every true heart weeps for't. All that dare 
Look into this affair see this main end, 
The French king's sister.' 

There is no doubt that Wolsey knew of Henry's at- 
tachment for Anne Boleyn before the divorce was 
spoken of. He gave many entertainments in honor of 

1 Act II., Scene 2. 



260 WOLSEF AND ANNE BOLEYN. 

the pair, one of which is exploited in Act I., Scene 4, 
an anachronism here, but an actual occurrence so fa- 
mous as to have been noted in the chronicles. It is 
not to be supposed, however, that Wolsey contemplat- 
ed Anne as anything more than the temporary diver- 
sion of the king. There was no reason in Wolsey's 
schemes for divorcing Katharine to replace her with 
Anne. Anne was known to be infected with the Re- 
formed doctrines. As a favorite wife of the King of 
England she would have been a power for that spread- 
ing infection of Lutheranism which Wolsey hated 
with his whole soul. Listen to his soliloquy when he 
realizes Henry's purpose to be marriage : 

It shall be the Duchess of Alen90ii, 
The French king's sister ; he shall marry her. 
Anne Bnllen. No, I'll no Anne Bullens for him. 
There is more in it than fair visage. Bullen, 
No, we'll no Bullens. 

The late queen's gentlewoman ; a knight's daughter, 
To be her mistress' mistress, the queen's queen. 

What though I know her virtuous 
And well deserving. Yet I know her for 
A spleeny Lutheran, and not wholesome to 
Our cause, that she should lie i' the bosom of 
Oar hard-ruled king.^ 

Now it is certain that when once Wolsey knew the 
mind of the king concerning Anne, he cooled visibly 
in the matter of the divorce. He dragged out the pro- 
ceedings interminably, and was disgraced and died be- 
fore they came to effect. 

1 Act III., Scene 2. 



WOLSEY'S SECRHJT DESIGNS. 261 

Shakespeare, for purposes of dramatic unity, groups 
these events without much regard to the actual se- 
quence of their happenings, but by so doing focussed 
more accurately the reader's eyes upon the salient 
truth. 

Schlegel says : " I undertake to prove that Shake- 
speare's anachronisms are for the most part committed 
purposely and after great consideration." Tliis is 
surely a truism. A student of the Eeformation in 
England will get more real light as to the moving oc- 
casion of that event from this play of Henry YIII. than 
from any history, whether ecclesiastical or secular. 
And this not only in spite of, but because of, the ana- 
chronisms which were the work of a master-painter, 
who knew by intuition the effect of foreground and 
perspective, and proceeded by no formal rules. 

This may be illustrated by comparing the words of 
the Clironicle in this affair of Wolsey's dehiy of the 
divorce with what has been already quoted from the 
poet's pen : 

While things were thus in hand, the Cardinal of York was 
advised that the king had set his affections upon a young 
gentlewoman named Anne . . . which did wait ui^on the 
queen. This was a great grief unto the cardinal, as he that 
perceived aforehand, that the king would marrie the said gentle- 
woman if the divorce took place. Wherefore he began with 
all diligence to disappoint that match, which by reason of the 
misliking which he had to the woman, he judged ought to be 
avoided more than present death. While the matter stood in 
this state, and the cause of the queen was to be heard and 
judged at Eome, by reason of the appeal which by her was 
put in ; the cardinal required the pope by letter and secret 
messengers, that in any wise he should defer the judgment of 



262 HENRY'S POLICY. 

the divorce, till lie might frame the king's mind to his pur- 
pose.* 

These are the balcT facts. Compare them with the car- 
dinal's formerly quoted words concerning Anne Boleyn, 
and with that other nobler and pathetic utterence to 
Cromwell, when the king discovers by an accident his 
minister's treacherous course. 

The long and difficult path through which Henry 
was obliged to travel for his cherishfed end is sufficiently 
indicated, but not too tediously dealt with, in the play. 
It Avas a series of moves on the jjolitical chess-board 
of Europe as well as within the palace of England's 
king, alike shuffling and disingenuous on the part of 
all concerned. No stone was left unturned by Henry. 
The appeal to the universities : 

All the clerks, 
I mean the learned ones in Christian kingdoms, 
Have their free voices. 

The appeal to Rome : 

Eome, the nurse of judgment, 
Invited by your noble self, hath sent 
One general tongue unto us, this good man, 
This just and learned priest, Cardinal Campeius, 
Whom once more I present unto your highness.'* 

The final disgust of the king and his determination to 
go on with the business in spite of pope, legates, or 
emperor, the break with Eome, and the beginning of 
the new regime are set forth in a paragraph : 

1 Chronicle quoted in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library^ Part I., Vol. 
IV., pp. 95, 96. 

2 Act II., Scene 3. 



RISE OF CRANMEU. 2C3 

King Henry. I may perceive 

These cardinals will trifle with me. I abhor 
This dilatory sloth, and tricks of Kome. 
My learned and well -beloved servant Cranmer, 
Prithee, return : with thy approach I know 
My comfort comes along, ^ 

Previous to being called into the king's service, where 
he Avas rapidly advanced to the Archbishopric of Can- 
terbury, Cranmer had expressed an opinion publicly 
that the divorce might be legally and morally settled 
by decisions of learned men and universities.- Henry 
is said to have sent for Cranmer upon hearing that he 
had made such a statement, and from that moment the 
first Protestant archbishop's star was in ascendency. 
The old regime headed b}^ Gardiner began to weaken 
in power, and the autonomy of the English Church be- 
gan to rise from the wreck of the old feudal depend- 
ence upon Eome. 

Once the break mth Eome is assured there is no 
further obstacle in Henry's path. The highest au- 
thority of the national Church dissolves the marriage 
with Katharine, who is given the title of Princess 
Dowager, which she steadfastly refuses to accept. 
Anne Bole;)Ti is cro^vned in great state in Westminster 
Abbey, and enters upon her few years of royal prog- 
ress. A paragraph or two may be quoted here illus- 
trating Shakespeare's inimitable manner of catching 
the spirit of a scene and making it glow with life and 

1 Actll., Scene 4. 

2 Bishop Burnett makes this statement, HUtory of the Reformation.^ 
Vol. I., p. 128. Courtcnay makes the strange mistake of quoting Cranmer's 
opinion, " the question of the marriage might be decided by native author- 
ities," referring to Burnett L, 14i, where it does not appear. 



264 CORONATION OF ANNE. 

color. One gentleman describes the coronation cere- 
monies to another : 

1st Gent. God save you, sir, where have you been broiling ? 
3c/ Gent. Among the crowd i' the Abbey, where a finger 

Could not be wedged in more. I am stifled 

With the mere rankness of their joy. 

The rich stream 
Of lords and ladies, having brought the queen 
To a prepared place in the choir, fell off 
A distance from her ; while her grace sat down 
To rest awhile, some half an hour or so, 
In a rich chair of state, opposing freely 
The beauty of her person to the j^eople. 

Which when the people 
Had a full view of, such a noise arose 
As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest. 
As loud and to as many tunes : hats, cloaks, 
Doublets, I think, flew up ; and had their faces 
Been loose, this day they had been lost.' 

What was the real position of Anne now in the midst 
of all these stirring events? Shakespeare's portrait 
of her in the two scenes (aside from the coronation) in 
which she is introduced has all the delicacy of a rare 
water-color, daintily washed in. Before the subject of 
Katharine's divorce is touched upon, the poet with his 
dramatic instinct presents Anne to his audience at one 
of the fashionable masques of the time, in Wolsey's 
house, where she meets the king by poetic license for 
the first time. The meaning is to convey, subtly and 
without offence to Henry's memory, the ^veil-known 

1 Act IV., Scene 1. 



"NEW CUSTOMS." 265 

fact that the khig had long known and paid his royal 
attention to Anne. Perhaps there was here a delicate 
reference to the often-referred-to fact, that although 
Anne accepted favors from the royal hand in the shape 
of titles and estates, she bestowed none in return un- 
til as a lawful wife she could with honor. Such an 
inference could not fail to be gratefully received by 
Anne's daughter, and Shakespeare among his other 
talents possessed those of an accomplished courtier. 

The masque party where we first meet with Anne 
was a type of the entertainment then most affected by 
the English nobility.^ The appearance of the king 
and some of his nobles in the fanciful garb of foreign 
shepherds, who " because they speak no English " send 
in a request to Wolsey by the Lord Chamberlain that 
they may be permitted to " share an hour of revels 
with them," was one of those freaks permitted to 
royalty. It was one of the causes of muttered discon- 
tent in Henry's early and middle reign that he encour- 
aged too much the importation of foreign fads and 
fashions. A fresh treaty with France, as that of the 
Field of the Cloth of Gold, was sure to be followed 
by a fresh outbreak. 

New customs, 
Though they be never so ridiculous, 
Nay, let them be niimanlv, yet are followed, 
As far as I see, all the good our English 
Have got by the late voyage is but merely 
A fit or two of the face. 

Their clothes are after such a pagan cut, too. 
That sure they have worn out Christendom. ^ 

I Act I., Scene 4. " Act I., Scene 3. 



26G ANNE BOLF.YN. 

That there were jealousies and discontent among the 
untravelled coiu-tiers appears, also, as is most natural : 

Sir T. Lovell. Faith, my lord, 

I hear of none but the new proclamation 

That's clapped upon the court gate. 
Cham. What is 't for ? 
Lov. The reformation of our travelled gallants 

That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors. 
Cham. I am glad 'tis there : now I would pray our monsieurs 

To think an English courtier may be wise 

And never see the Louvre. ' 

The picture of Anne at these revels is that of any fair and 
blithesome maiden of the court circles in those days. 
The favor of the king does not overwhelm her. She 
gives and takes her little share in the light talk and 
jesting of such a merrymaking with ease and quick- 
ness of tongue. If one is expected to find some special 
trait of character here it must be that of light-hearted- 
ness. The scene calls for no emotion, but such de- 
mands as it makes upon the social powers of a young 
girl among her equals of fortune and birth, in the bare 
dozen words she utters, Anne fully meets neither 
better nor worse than a thousand English girls Avould 
have done under like circumstances. The same must 
be said of that other scene, in her conversation with 
the old court lady, one of those charmingly carved 
Shakespearean pawns which he ever puts to such good 
use as material with which to work out his plans. 
Here Anne shows more of the woman's nature. But 
it is still on the surface. Mrs. Jameson remarks, as a 

» Act I. , Scene 3. 



ANNE AND KATHARINE. 267 

woman would, " How nobly has Shakespeare done jus- 
tice to the two women, and heightened our interest in 
both by placing the praises of Katharine in the month 
of Anne Bullen. And how characteristic of the latter, 
that she should first express unbounded pity for her 
mistress, insisting chiefly, however, on her fall from 
her regal state and worldly pomps, thus betraying her 
own disposition. That she could call the loss of tem- 
poral pomp once enjoyed ' a suiferance equal to soul 
and body severing ' . . . how natiu-al." ^ 

Shakespeare will allow himself to give us no un- 
pleasant impressions of Anne, and I must say that a 
study of the whole story warrants the poet's lightness 
of touch. He was true to history in leaving his 
hearers with tender and gentle thoughts of the mother 
of Elizabeth, as he was true to his art in, as Mrs. Jame- 
son points out, "constantly avoiding all personal col- 
lision between " her and Katharine. 

Anne was sincere in her pity for Katharine's fate : 

Here's tlie pang that pinches : 
His Liglmess having lived so long with her, and she 
So good a lady that no tongue could ever 
Pronounce dishonor of her . 

It is a pity 
Would move a monster. 

She was sincere in her own first feeling : 

I swear 'tis better to be lowly born, 
And range with humble livers in content, 
Tlian to be perked up in a glistering grief 
And wear a golden sorrow. 

' Mrs. Jameson's Cfiaracteristics of ]yom€n^ art. Katharine of Aragon. 



26S AWNE'S GHABAGTER. 

She is sincere in lier avowal that she " would not be 
queen, no, not for all the world ; " and when almost im- 
mediately after, being informed that she is raised to the 
dignity of Marchioness of Pembroke, 

To wliich title 
A thousand pound a year, annual support, 
Out of his grace he adds, 

she is also sincere in her joyous thanks : 

Beseech your lordship, 
Vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience, 
As from a blushing handmaid, to his highness, 
Whose health and royalty I j)ray for. ^ 

In all these various stages of feeling Anne was equally 
sincere, because she was, albeit at this time a sweet 
woman, not a very deep-natured one. The impression 
of the moment was vivid, but readily, if not effaced, 
essentially dimmed by that of the next. Could Shake- 
speare's purpose have embraced the last years of Anne 
Boleyn's life, he might have left on record a character 
quite as touching and pathetic in its way as that of 
Katharine. Anne's letter to Henry, when accused of 
the crime for which she was condemned to die, is iden- 
tical in spirit and dignity with the speech of Katha- 
rine before the divorce tribunal at Blackfriars. 

Katharine's part in the tragedy of her divorce has 
become a classic of giievous wrong and undeserved 
sorrow nobly borne. Dr. Johnson declares that the 
genius of Shakespeare goes in and out of the play 
with this character. His admiration of her character 

1 Act II., Scenes. 



DR. JOHNSON AND HEINE. 269 

worked up Heine to the point of declaring that but 
for the Englishman's praise he would be tempted 
to give Katharine her just deserts.^ 

Johnson's remark is in support of the critical posi- 
tion that Shakespeare had very little to do with the 
composition of " Henry VIII." Hudson, following a 
number of the orthodox critics, takes the same view, 
and gives the Stratford poet credit for about one-half 
the play. For purposes of historical study, it makes 
no difference if Thomas Fletcher wrote the whole 
of it. But as Skottowe says, " While there may be 
truth in the supposition, it is impossible to assume it as 
a fact without better evidence than mere conjecture." 

Certainly the genius of Shakespeare cannot be mis- 
taken in the whole story of the pla}', the unity of its 
theme, and especially in its treatment of Wolsey as 
well as Katharine. 

But Katharine is superbly drawn. From the mo- 
ment of her introduction, pleading for the oppressed 
people of her husband's realm, until the last scene in 
which she dies unqueened, yet never more a queen, 
there is a sustained harmony in the delineation of her 
character which makes her one of the most perfectly 
chiselled cameos of the Shakespearean casket. Her 
voice is raised in behalf not only of the despised com- 
mons, but of the noble Buckingham. She links Wol- 

1 I cherish an insuperable prejudice against this queen, to whom, how- 
ever, I must ascribe every virtue. As a wife she was a pattern of domes- 
tic fidelity. As a queen she bore her part with the highest dignity and 
majesty. Asa Christian she was piety itself. . . . 

Shakespeare has employed all the might of his genius to glorify her, but 
all this is in vain, when we see that Dr. Johnson, that great pot of porter, 
falls into sweet rapture at her sight, and foams with eulogy. — Shake- 
speare's Maidois and VVoiuiti. 



270 KATHARINE 

sey instinctively with both events, and when she finds 
that the web of casuistry he has wound about his af- 
fairs is too stout for her woman's lance to pierce, ex- 
presses the hope or hopelessness of the great mass of 
England's every-day people — confused by the jangling 
sophistries of the court circles whose centre w^as the 
cardinal, and utterly helpless to prove what was in- 
stinctively believed to be true — in the sad ejaculation 
Avhich must have risen to the lips of many of Eng- 
land's noblest citizens, " God mend all." 

When she is finally brought to face the stunning 
catastrophe of her own life, and pleads her queenly 
rights and dignity in that pathetic speech which Shake- 
speare has redeemed with the alchemy of his genius 
from the blunt chronicle of Holinshed, the unfortunate 
Katharine, again by instinct, lays the charge of her 
heavy sorrow at Wolsey's door, and rightly. 

I do beheve, 
Induced by potent circumstances, that 
You are my enemy ; and make my challenge 
You shall not be my judge, for it is you 
Hath blown this coal betwixt my lord and me.* 

Even Henry is touched by the nobility of her nature 
and the hot grief of her insulted soul. He cries as 
she is led away : 

Go thy ways. Kate. 
The man i' the world who shall report he has 
A better wife, let him in naught be trusted, 
For speaking false in that. Thou art alone 

The queen of earthly queens.^ 

1 Act II., Scene 4. 'Ibid. 



REFUSES TO RENOUNCE HER RIGHTS. 271 

We uext meet Katharine in the scene where she is 
visited by Wolsey and Campeius, who endeavor to win 
her over to the king's wish that she renounce her 
wifely rights, and accept the title of Princess Dowager. 
Grief and misery have softened her proud temper, and 
as she sits sorrowful in the midst of her women, so she 
meets with more resignation the advances of the le- 
gates, although not to be stirred from her resolution 
to live and die a queen. 

Let me have time and counsel for my cause, 
Alas, I am a woman, friendless, hopeless.^ 

but her final decision is : 

My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty 
To give up willingly that noble title 
Your master wed me to ; nothing but death 
Shall e'er divorce my dignity.^ 

This was not a yearning desire to hold to the rank and 
honors of her queenship. These were little to her, 
divorced already from her husband's heart. But the 
honor of her wifehood, the stainless birth of her child 
were at stake. Perhaps, who will say, there was that 
yet left in her heart for the man who for twenty years 
she had called husband, which was not even a pardon- 
able jealousy of one who had supplanted her in his 
affections, but a noble- shame for him, her lord and 
king, to be so self-exposed a villain in the eyes of 
men. 

But it is in the last scene of this pathetic tragedy, at 
Kimbolton, whence the queen had retired to die. where 

' Act III., Scene 1. -Ibid. 



272 LAST MESSAGES. 

are shown the noblest traits of her fine character — for- 
giveness of Wolsey who had so wronged her, and an 
anxious care for the men and women servants who had 
chmg to her through all her misfortunes, with a last 
appeal to Henry on behalf of their daughter Mary. 

Didst tliou not tell me, Griffith, as thou led'st me, 
That the great child of honor, Cardinal Wolsey, 
Was dead? 

So may he rest, his faults lie gently on him. 

Peace be with him.^ 

To Capucius, the ambassador of the emperor, she gives 
a letter for the king : 

In which I have commended to his goodness 

The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter. 

The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her ; 

Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding 

(She is young and of a noble modest nature ; 

I hope she will deserve well) and a little 

To love her for her mother's sake that loved him. 

Heaven knows how dearly. My next poor petition 

Is that his noble grace would have some pity 

Upon my wretched women, that so long 

Have followed both my fortunes faithfully. 

The last is for my men ; they are the poorest ; 
But poverty could never draw them from me. 
That they may have their wages duly paid them. 
And something over to remember me by.' 

There are many affecting passages in the works of the 
great dramatist, but these last messages to Henry, es- 

' Act IV., Scene 2. 2 ibid. 



DEATH OF KATHARINE. 273 

pecially the final words from the deserted and dying 
Avife to the husband who had ah-eady taken another in 
her place, are perhaps the most touching : 

Eemember me 
In all humility unto his highness. 
Say his long trouble now is i^assing 
Out of this world ; tell him in death I blessed him, 
For so I will. My eyes grow dim. Farewell.' 

When we remember what was back of this — neglect, 
suspicion, calumny, and finally an unjust divorce — and 
contrast these with the pride of the queen, the dignity 
of the wife, the love and honor of the woman : the poet 
will be seen to have painted one of the most exquis- 
ite portraits of his rare collection in the character of 
Katharine of Aragon.- 

The historic fidelity of Shakespeare's portrayals of 
these two women can hardly be questioned. It must 
be remembered of Anne that he leaves her at her 
coronation before the faintest suspicion against her 
pm'ity had been whispered. What she became after 
the birth of Elizabeth will always be a fiercely disputed 
question. It is quite possible that her lightness of 
mind, and shallowness of spiritual culture, acted upon 
by what she too well knew to be the fickleness of the 
king, developed into indiscretions, and hardened into 
selfishness. Contemporary accounts are confusing, 
and neutralize each other. If the burden of testimony 
is, as Mr. Froude claims, against Anne, it must be re- 
membered that contemporary testimony is apt to be 

' Act IV., Scene 3. 

2 Katharine did not die, however, until 1536, three years after the birth 
of Elizabeth. 

18 



274 SHAKESPEARE'S TREATMENT OF ANNE, 

swayed by undue influences. The politics of the Eng- 
lish and continental powers in the middle of the six- 
teenth century Avere too tortuous, too honeycombed by 
the self-seeking and ambitious plots of individuals, to 
throw much real light upon the private indiscretions of 
the wife of Henry YIII. She might well have been 
the victim of circumstances over which she, no more 
than Buckingham or Katharine, had control. But as 
to Shakespeare's etching of her character there can be 
little criticism save that his lines are too few, and the 
general profile somewhat indistinct. He could not 
have done otherwise in a play to be witnessed perhaps 
by Anne's daughter. He could not have done other- 
Avise, historically, up to the point of time where she 
disappears from the stage, the happy mother of that 

*' — royal infant (Heaven still move about her) 
Thongli in her cradle, yet now promises 
Upon this land a thousand, thousand blessings 
Which time shall bring to ripenessJ 

The affair of the divorce cannot be fully estimated 
without one or two words concerning him who was the 
virtual author of it, Henry himself. We have suffi- 
ciently indicated already Avhat must be the judgment 
of posterity upon the whole career of this second, and, 
next to Elizabeth, greatest of Tudor sovereigns. 

It will be noted by the careful reader of the play 
that Henry is not set forth as an object of condem- 
nation. His character is very gently touched upon. 
We have already suggested how far tins may have been 
the result of the poet's delicate situation, patronized 

1 Act v.. Scene 4. 



EXTENUATION OF HENRY. 275 

by the court of Elizabeth. But there is another reason 
also, and one which again makes clear the claim of 
Shakespeare's general fidelity to historic truth. There 
is an alternative view to the one most modern histo- 
rians have taken, of Henry's motives both in seeking 
the divorce and in marrying again. If we shut out the 
after career of the king, as Shakespeare was bound to 
do by the limitations of his dramatic purpose, there is 
much to suppoi-t a far more favorable view than that 
we have here taken. The poet gives Henry the bene- 
fit of this doubt, and allows himself no partisanship 
for one side or the other. He illuminates the facts, 
and allows each witness of his mask to go away with 
w^hat picture he will in his mind. It is but fair to 
Henry, as it is necessary to an understanding of Shake- 
speare's neutrality, to state this other side. It is well 
known that at first Henry was opposed, as a youth, to 
his marriage with Katharine because she had been his 
brother's wife. The then pope, Julius, had granted a 
dispensation ; but it was the validity of this dispensa- 
tion, and therefore the validity of the marriage itself, 
which was brought into question by Henry and his 
advisers. The question having been brought up once, 
whether instigated by Wolsey or Henry, forced the 
latter to face the prospect of a disputed succession to 
his throne, in case any party after his death should be 
interested to present the early marriage as null and 
void. All England was interested to prevent another 
devastating war of succession, like that of the Wars of 
the Koses, which brought Henry's father to the throne. 
Henry may have been troubled in conscience. His 
superstitious fears may have been aroused by the fate 



276 THE KING'S CONSCIENCE, 

of Katharine's cliildren dying one after another, leav- 
ing only Mary alive. He longed for a son to take np 
his work after him. All this is in extenuation. All 
this may have, and to an extent probably did have, an 
influence with the king at the time of the divorce. 
And all this is subtly indicated in Shakespeare's gen- 
tle treatment of the king's relations to Katharine and 
Anne, in that affair which became the tragedy of both 
their lives : 

Hence I took a thought, 
This was a judgment on me ; that my kingdom 
Well worthy the best heir o' the world, should not 
Be gladdened in it by me ; then follows that 
I weighed the danger which my realm stood in 
By this my issue's fail ; and that gave to me 
Many a groaning throe. Thus hulling in 
The wild sea of my conscience, I did steer 
Toward this remedy, whereupon we are 
Now present here together.^ 

That the king's mind was afterward altered, perhaps 
by "many a groaning throe " of remorse, we have evi- 
dence, for by his will he left the throne, first, after his 
infant son Edward, to Mary the daughter of Katha- 
rine, before it should fall to Elizabeth, the daughter of 
Anne, and they succeeded in that order. Much as we 
find to despise in Henry YIIL, we may be justified in 
thinking that he thus answered the prayer of a dis- 
crowned queen, in placing her daughter first in succes- 
sion over the daughter of her immediate successor to 
the royal couch. 

Out of the divorce in the drama, if not quite directly, 

1 Act II. , Scene 4. 



CARDINAL WOLSET. 277 

is evolved tlie fall of Cardinal Wolsey. The crafty and 
delaying policy of Kome became evident in the actions 
of the king's great minister, and without doubt the sus- 
picions thus first aroused, aggi-avated by his opposition 
to the marriage with Anne Boleyn, caused Henry to 
open his eyes to the fact that Wolsey had groAvn too 
great a subject for a sovereign's entire safety. 

Thomas Wolsey was of humble origin, but of suffi- 
cient family means to have been educated for the Chui'ch 
at one of the universities. Tradition called his father's 
trade that of butcher ; an honest enough business, 
and no shame to Wolsey were it true. But the high- 
born nobles of Henry's court could not perceive ^ ith 
equanimity the rise of such an one to the place of Car- 
dinal Archbishop of York, and first favorite of the 
king. Buckingham expresses the popular view of one 
who for fifteen years "outworthed a noble's blood: " 

This butcher's cur is venom-mouthed, and I 

Have not the power to muzzle him. Therefore best 

Not wake him in his slumber. 

His abilities Avere admitted : 

There's in him stuff that puts him to these ends, 
For being not propped by ancestry, 

The force of his own merit makes his way. ' 

But at the time the play opens this "butcher's cur" 
holds all the noble hounds of England in short leash. 
Shakespeare represents him truly as at this time gen- 
erally unpopular with both nobles and commons. He 

lActl, Scene 1. 



278 WOLSEY'S GROWTH IN POWER. 

had taught Henry to govern with the least interfer- 
ence of Parliament, and carried matters of state with a 
high hand. Burnett says "the king liked him well, 
which he so managed that he quickly engrossed the 
king's favor to himself, and for fifteen years together 
w^as the most absolute favorite that has ever been seen 
in England. All foreign treaties and places of trust at 
home w^ere at his ordering. He did what he pleased, 
and his ascendant over the king was such that there 
never appeared any party against him all that ^\ hile." ^ 
This Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Buckingham 
anent the treaty of the Field of the Cloth of Gold : 

"Why the devil 
Upon this French going-out took he upon him 
Without the privity o' the king to appoint 
Who should attend on him ? He makes up the file 
Of all the gentry : for the most part such 
To whom as great a charge as little honor 
He meant to lay upon, and his own letter 
(The honorable board of council out) 
Must fetch him in, he papers.^ 

The nobles were thus touched in their vanity and 
pride, but the people felt more heavily the power of 
Wolsey's usurping hand. The well-filled treasury 
which Henry VII. had bequeathed to his son was 
soon exhausted, and Wolsey was expected to replenish 
it. The exposure of some of his extortionate measures 
made by Katharine to the king, already noted, received 
the royal censure, but gave Wolsey a double oppor- 
tunity to strengthen his position, first in that fine plea 

' Burnett : History of the Reformation, vol. i., p. 11. 
a Act I., Scene 1. 



HIS GUNNING. 279 

against public detraction wliicli, as Courtenay observes, 
*' is generally just, though not applicable to the parti- 
cular case." 

If I am 

Traduced by ignorant tongues, which neither know 
My faculties nor person, yet will be 
The chroniclers of my doings, let me say 
'Tis the fate of place, and the rough brake 
That virtue must go through.' 

and so on in a passage bristling with acute philosophy. 
The second point made by AVolsey out of his tempo- 
rary discomfitui-e is indicated thus : 

(To the Secretary.) 

A word with you. 
Let there be letters writ to every shire, 
Of the king's grace and pardon. The grieved commons 
Hardly conceive of me : let it be noised 
That through our intercession this revokement 
And pardon comes. ^ 

So cunningly he endeavored to turn the king's mercy 
into his ov^ti, and to pose as the friend of the "grieved 
commons." But the commons of England, even in 
those days before the daily newspapers, were not easily 
hoodwinked, although mightily fickle with their favor. 
They cried aloud for Wolsey's fall and moumed at the 
touching spectacle of Wolsey fallen. The lighter side 
of Wolsey's character, brought out in the mask festi- 
val given at York Palace for the king's pleasm^e, is 
equally true with the stronger phases of his political 
and ecclesiastical ambition. That a cardinal arch- 

» Act I, Scene 2. a Ibid. 



280 THE MASQUE AT WOLSEY'S HOUSE. 

bishop should be, in a sense, the pander of the king's 
appetites, was one of the relics of a morally barbarous 
age, fast passing even in that time, and Katharine's 
characterization of it would be the estimate of people 
not over-pious in their own lives : 

His promises were, as he then was, mighty, 
But his performance, as he is now, nothing. 
Of his own body, he was ill, and gave 
The clergy ill example.^ 

The story of these times would scarce have been com- 
plete, however, without some such scene as that in 
which Anne is introduced to the king, and the connec- 
tion of the calxlinal with it. The setting of that feast 
has all the local color of the day. Gathered there were 
high birth, riches, fame, and pleasure. There was feast- 
ing and mirth and witty badinage ; king, bishop, nobles, 
commons, and fair women ; and jostling these were 
treasons, plottings, conspiracies, detractions. The pal- 
ace was lighted for revelry, while gTeat affairs of 
Church and State were seething to the boiling-point 
in the caldron of destiny. 

Shakespeare causes Henry to disclaim Wolsey's pri- 
mal influence in the affair of the divorce : 

My lord cardinal, 
I do excuse you : yea, upon mine honor, 
I free you from it. 

— you ever 
Have wished the sleeping of this business, never 
Desired it to be stirred.'^ 

' Act IV., Scene 2. 2 Act II., Scene 4. 



WOLSEY AND KATHARINE. 281 

But Shakespeare indicates plainly enough, leaving the 
original stirring of the business an open question so 
far as Wolsey is concerned, that the cardinal eagerly 
seized and used it as an occasion to further his own 
ambitious designs, which had as their object the papal 
chair. 

Wolsey's relations to Katharine are set forth as they 
really appeared to the actors in the tragedy. No hu- 
man eye could pierce the motives of Wolsey in his 
treatment of Katharine, or estimate the actual truth 
of his opinion of the queen, who was his victim. 
His intercourse with her, even in the face of her 
sharp accusations of his treachery toward the king, 
the people, and herself, is marked by that suave cour- 
tesy and diplomatic reserve which characterized his 
public career. He does not retort. He knows his 
power and waits. In his schemes Katharine was a 
pawn only, to be used in a larger game than her do- 
mestic relations with the king. He was personally 
more bitter against Anne than against her. To him, as 
to the great ministers of state before and after him, a 
woman's happiness was nothing in the balance against 
the consummation of a statesman's purposes. After 
his fall from power he showed symptoms of a warmer 
humanity than his mightiness had allowed him to dis- 
play. One may think that he had some pity for this 
woman who fathomed his designs, and fought desper- 
ately against his ambitious plots, because she had a 
brave heart and a high courage, two elements which 
he, who possessed them both, must have admired. 

There were three strands twisted in the cord of fate 
that strangled Woksey's life, for the failure of his 



282 CAUSES OF WOLSEY'S DOWNFALL. 

scliemes was the end of his life. One was his open 
opposition to Anne Boleyn, as the wife of his king, at 
a time when her influence was stronger than his own. 
The weak point in Wolsey's strategy was in not al- 
loAving for the obstinate nature of Henry in matters of 
love, as in matters of state. History is full of exam- 
ples, which Wolsey must have known, where the silken 
thread held in a woman's hand is stronger than the 
stoutest cable held by another. The opposition of the 
man who had been his pander in all things else, irri- 
tated Henry. There were not lacking those who in- 
flamed him by hinting that Wolsey treated him too 
much as a tool and too little as a master, and Anne's 
personal influence must surely have been used against 
him whom her woman's instinct would have taught 
was her enemy. 

Another element in the downfall of the cardinal was 
the muttering of the storm which preceded the Refor- 
mation. Wolsey, as papal legate, had again and again 
broken the law of England in the matter of its rela- 
tions with the papal see. So long as this was not 
counter to Henry's interest, Henry was undisturbed. 
But when he discovered that his divorce must be 
gained without the pope's bull, and probably against 
the papal decree, the political and ecclesiastical rela- 
tions of England and Rome were violently ruptured. 
In this web Wolsey, a loyal churchman, was caught. 
The truth of history compels us to state that the list 
of charges preferred against Wolsey, and catalogued by 
Suffolk and Surrey in the play, while all true, were one 
and all accusations which came with ill grace from the 
king's majesty. Almost without exception he had the 



SUMMARY OF WOLSET'S LIFE. 283 

royal sanction for them. "Well might he exclaim in 
hope of the king's interference : 

So much fairer 
And spotless shall mine innocence arise 
When the king knows mj truth. 

And again : 

Speak on, sir : 
I dare your worst objections. If I blush 
It is to see a nobleman want manners.' 

Wolsey had sinned, but Henry was the craven, in that 
he punished what he permitted. 

But the chief cause at the root of Wolsey 's fall lay 
in himself, apart from king, nobles, and commons. 

Shakespeare brings this fully out in the treatment of 
Wolsey's reception of the news that he is deposed and 
that the sun of the royal favor for him had passed be- 
hind a cloud. We would be glad to believe that the 
poet's portrait in its last touches is accurate. For the 
final view we have of Wolsey, both by means of his 
owTi words, and the spoken epitaph of Griffith to 
Katharine, is of a man who, once proud, arrogant, un- 
scrupulous, false to his ov/n vows of priesthood, over- 
ambitious in his lo^^alty to his prince, has become 
through misfortune, humble, gentle, single-minded, re- 
pentant, and restored to the simplicity of his youth, 
when, without thought of greatness, he studied to be a 
useful and unambitious priest. 

We do not feel in this tremendous transition that 
Wolsey is anything else than sincere. It may be the 
poet's art, but the art must have been colored from the 

»Act III, Scene 2. 



'284 W0L8EY AT LEICESTER. 

life. In evidence of tliis is the eloquent speech which 
Shakespeare puts in his mouth, as addressed to Crom- 
well, ending with the famous words : 

O Cromwell, Cromwell, 
Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. ' 

This speech is based upon an interview of the dying 
cardinal with one Master Kingston, who attended him 
in his last hours at Leicester Abbey, where he died, 
which interview and incident are faithfully transcribed 
by the dramatist from Holinshed's Chronicle : 

*' Sir, quoth Maister Kingston, you be in much pensiveness, 
doubting that thing, that in good faith ye need not. Well, well, 
Maister Kingston, quoth the cardinal, I see the matter how it 
is framed, but if I had served God, as diligently as I have doone 
the king, he would not have given me over in my greie haires : 
but it is the just reward that I must receive for the diligent 
pains and study that I had to do him service, not regarding my 
service to God, but only to do his pleasure." 

Ambition, the "vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself 
and falls on the other side," was the great man's sin. 
When the king by accident discovers of what enormous 
wealth he is possessed Wolsey's horror lies not in the 
fear of losing money, but of losing the means to that 
end his very soul sighed for : 

This paper has undone me: 'Tis the account 
Of all that world of wealth I've drawn together 
"With mine own hands ; indeed to gain the Popedom, 
And fee my friends in Eome.'^ 

'Act III., Scene 2. 2 ibid. 



WOLSEY'S DEATH. 285 

Ambition of this same exaltation was it that caused 
his shuffling policy with Kome and Henry in the mat- 
ter of the divorce. It was nothing to him whether 
Katharine, or Anne, or the Duchess of Alengon were 
queen. It was much to him that he should so shuffle 
the cards of state as that Henry should draw the one 
best fitted for the furtherance of his plans on the 
triple tiara of Eome, and Wolsey, once the scales had 
fallen from his eyes, and he saw clearly that the game 
was not his, perceived as clearly as any outsider 
wherein he had failed : 

Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me. 

Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition ; 

By that sin fell the angels : how can man then. 

The image of his Maker, hoj^e to win by it. 

Love thyself last, cherish those hearts that hate thee, 

CoiTuption wins not more than honesty. ^ 

Shakespeare draws out the character of Wolsey at 
length in the interview between Katharine and Grif- 
fith. The man conveys to her the story of the cardi- 
nal's death, and in gentle language draws a picture of 
the scene in Leicester (historically accurate and taken 
from Holinshed almost word for word) : 

Where the reverend abbot 
With all his convent honorably received him : 
To whom he gave these words : ** O father abbot. 
An old man broken witli the storms of state 
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye ; 
Give him a little earth for charity." ^ 

^ Act III., Scene 2. We may compare this confession of Wolsey's with 
the warning of the king at the time of the cardinal's plea for consideration, 
in the matter of the oppression of the king's subjects, Act I., Scene 2. 

2 Act IV., Scene 2. 



286 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, 

Alternately picturing the lights and shadows of his 
character in the dialogue of that scene, we have a fair 
and accurate resume of his life and influence. And in 
spite of the detraction which gathered about him from 
the friends of the Keformation, which in his soul he 
hated, the truth of history is summed up in Griffith's 
words, concluding, 

His overthrow heaped happiness upon him, 
For then, and not till then, he felt himself. 
And found the blessedness of being little. 
And, to add greater honors to his age 
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.^ 

As the influence of AVolsey is seen to be cast over 
the drama, " no man's pie being free from his ambi- 
tious finger," so the careful reader Avill perceive the 
dawn of the English Keformation slowly shining 
through its clouds of social, political, and religious 
confusion. 

I have already noted how significantly begins 
and ends the play. It must be noted further that 
the change of national religious faith is so handled 
by the poet that no reproach is visited upon the cen- 
tral figures of one or other of the great ecclesiastical 
parties. 

The dominant note of Shakespeare's England was 
not so much Protestantism as Nationalism. The 
people were slowly, very slowly, but surely, cr3'Stalliz- 
ing their faith apart from the spiritual headship of 
the pope. It had been a good thing for England to 
have done, had she never gone farther in what her 

' Act IV., Scene :3. 



REFORMATION IN THE PLAY. 287 

divines insisted was a real reformation of religious 
doctrine. 

Henry was an uncouth instrument of Christian prog- 
ress, and yet he was essentially the master-mind to 
guide the outward and necessarily political part of the 
English revolt from Eome. It must always be insisted 
by the fair historian that Henry VIII. and his domes- 
tic affairs were not the causes of the English Reforma- 
tion, but the occasions. He himself, without doubt, 
died in the old faith. That was a part of his charac- 
ter. And it must be further noted by the historian 
and reader of histories, that not the moral leprosy of 
Henry, the feeble and inefficient energy of Edward, 
nor the nipping and eager frost of Mary's 23ersecution, 
could prevent the religious movement, which, for good 
or ill, according to the personal bias of this or that 
critic, came to the full flower of its development under 
Elizabeth the superb. 

This Reformation is writ large over the play. There 
are very few direct references to it, which makes the skill 
of the dramatist all the more pronounced. Here and 
there a sentence indicates the working of the leaven. 
That these are so few is a marvel indeed when we 
recall the popular feeling of the epoch when it Avas 
placed upon the stage. 

A faint reference is made in Lord Sands's speech 
to the Chamberlain as they set forth to attend the 
masque at Wolsey's house. They are commending the 
cardinal for his bounteousness : 

In liim 
Sparing would show a worse sin than ill doctrine.^ 

1 Act I, Scene -3. 



288 CRANMER AND GARDINER. 

^yolsey knows Anne for a " spleeny Lutheran," ^ and 

again : 

There is sprung up 
An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer ; one 
Hath crawled into the favor of the king, 
And is his oracle.^ 

The mob discuss the relations of Bishop Gardiner and 
Cranmer, at that time standing types of the old faith 
passing away and the new faith coming forward : 

2d Gent. He of Winchester 

Is held no great good lover of the archbishoiys, 
The virtuous Cranmer. 

3fZ Gent. All the land knows that : 

However, yet there's no great breach, when it comes 
Cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him. 

The last, act of the play is occupied almost wholly 
with such scenes as shall leave the impression that the 
Eeformation is an accomplished fact. Cranmer, who, 
as has been said, may be taken as a sort of allegorical 
figure representing the English Church separated from 
Kome, is brought in direct conflict with Gardiner, who 
is the incarnation of the old faith, which in him dies 
hard. The stock from which the expected heir of 
Henry springs, Anne, he wishes it were " gi'ubbed up 
now." Cranmer is "a most archheretic, a pestilence 
that doth infect the land." With a dramatic license 
allowable for the effect he desires to produce, the poet 
places Cranmer's iirraignment before the Council for 
heresy, in the lifetime of Anne, while it did not occur 
until the time of Catherine Parr, Henry's sixth wife. 

I Act ni., Scenes. -Ibid. 

3 Act IV., Scene 1. 



BAPTISM OF ELIZABETH. 289 

From this persecution, wliicli Shakespeare transcribes 
from Fox's " Book of Martyrs," wellnigh word for word, 
the archbishop is rescued by the king's friendship. 
That Cranmer is a " favorer of this new sect " weighs 
not with the stubborn foe of Rome. In the face of the 
accusing Council the king says : 

My lord of Canterbury, 
I have a suit which you must not deny me, 
That is a fair young maid, that yet wants baptism— 
You must be godfather and answer for her.^ 

And so ends the play with the baptism of Elizabeth, 
in the dawn of a new epoch for England and the world. 
Well might the Virgin Queen be flattered by the refer- 
ences to her royal person with which the last scenes 
are strewn. At Anne's coronation one says : 

And who knows yet 
But from this hidy may proceed a gem 
To lighten all this isle. 

And Suffolk, courtier-like : 

She is a gallant creature and complete 
In mind and feature. I persuade me, from her 
Shall fall some blessing to this land, which shall 
In it be memoriz'd.- 

Tlie final speech of Cranmer, which some critics ^vill 
have is an interpolation, may be or not. It seems to 
me to be in Shakespeare's vein, and the reference to 
James to have been inserted after the death of Eliza» 
beth. It does not go harshly, but rather supplements 

lAct v., Scene 2. » Act III, Scene 2. 

19 



290 ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND. 

smoothly what precedes. The student of history gains 
by it, whether Shakespeare or Fletcher wrote it ; 
whether Elizabeth herself ever read it or not. It is a 
literal statement in poetical language of the splendid 
work the Virgin Princess had brought to such perfec- 
tion and handed on to her successor James, whose 
praise is also prophetically sounded in it. And so the 
play ends fittingly, a glowing, seer-like vision of the 
glorious future of England. 

It ends under the vaulted roof, in the soft dim light 
of the palace chapel ; with high altar blazin''g from 
myriad twinkling points ; the sound of rich harmonies 
rising and falling through its fretted arches and adown 
its majestic aisles. About the altar and font is clus- 
tered a striking group. Cranmer's is a typical voice, 
the richly dowered babe christened Elizabeth a con- 
gruous personage, with which to bring to an end that 
series of splendid chronicles which then stirred the 
English heart, and since has broadened the English 
mind. We may truly reflect that it was because 
Shakespeare was so essentially the prophet of his own, 
that he has become the poet of all ages. 



CHAPTEE IX. 



SUMMARY. 



In summing up the results of this study of English 
History in Shakespeare's plays the object must be to 
set forth not what Shakespeare may have intended to 
do, but what he actually accomplished, as a contribu- 
tion to the understanding of English History. 

With whatever intention and on whatever model 
constructed, the ten Chronicle plays tell a definite story 
from which may be drawn a clear moral. 

The literal historical event wiiich forms a framework 
for the series is, as has been already noted in the 
body of this work, the Decline and Fall of the House 
of Plantagenet. Working through this, and at times 
seen to be hastening its consummation, are discerned 
certain movements of English thought, and certain 
marked stages in the development of the English peo- 
ple, which were elements in the making of modern 
England. 

From Eichard II, to Ei chard III., inclusive, every 
reign is touched upon in the eight plays of Shake- 
speare. The story begins with a dramatic recital of the 
occasion of the usurpation of the Lancastrian family 
in the person of Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of 
Gaunt, "time-honored Lancaster," and cousin to the 
reigning monarch. Eichard II. is the victim of his 
own weak unkingliness, as well as of the semi-bondage 



292 lUCHARD IL TO HENRY VI. 

in which his youth was passed. He resigned his 
crown and sceptre to the man whom he had wronged 
and persecuted, and in so doing sowed the seeds of an 
internecine strife that blossomed finally in the Wars of 
the Koses. Henry lY. was not innocent of " devious 
ways" in forcing the abdication of his cousin. His 
punishment came swiftly upon him in the uprising and 
revolts among his nobles which made his reign a mel- 
ancholy and barren bauble of royalty. His personal 
necessities, however, forced him to strike a deadly blow 
at the feudal power of the English nobility, and with 
the decay of that institution the commons began to as- 
sert themselves, blindly and feebly enough at first, but 
with an ever-growing self-knowledge, self-poise, and 
self-respect. 

Henry V. was driven, by the uncertain tenure of his 
paternal heritage, to pursue once more those " foreign 
quarrels," which, while they have ever reflected glory 
on the English name, have never done aught to in- 
crease the domestic harmony and strength of the Eng- 
lish people. 

The brightness of great victories quickly paled ; and 
the territories won were speedily lost. All that Henry 
Y. had gained was dissipated in the time of his son 
and successor, Henry YI. ; and the miseries of this 
reign, culminating in the tragedy of civil war, are di- 
rectly traceable to the use and abuse of the French 
conquests of Henry Y. They provoked rivalries 
among the barons, which took overt shape in the for- 
mation of parties at court, each intent upon control- 
ling the policy of the king. The marriage of Henry 
YI. with Margaret of Anjou was brought aboiit at the 



EDWARD IV. TO RICHARD III. 293 

cost of many of the French provinces won in bloody 
wars. The contentions of the rival nobles penetrated 
to the commons. All England became an armed camp. 
The disinherited house of York craftily enough con- 
spired to snatch back what Henry IV. had taken by an 
act of usurpation. Edward lY. seized the throne 
while Henry was yet alive, inheriting from his father 
the claim which had lain in the person of Edmund Mor- 
timer, great grandson of Lionel, third son of Edward 
III., when Bolingbroke succeeded Richard II. Ex- 
hausted by war, and at the bottom indifferent to the 
claims of the rival families, the nation, through its 
Parliament, settled down under Edward, and he reigned 
in undisputed security. 

EngHsh historians count the thirteen troubled weeks 
between the death of Edward IV. and the accession of 
Richard III. as the " reign " of Edward V. The time 
was occupied by Richard Gloster in disposing of all 
obstacles in his own pathway to the throne. When 
Richard III. accomplished his ambition and became 
by parliamentary title King of England, the cup of the 
Plantagenets was full. 

The usurping Duke of Gloster, confirmed though he 
was in his royal dignity by the obsequious voice of the 
commons, was not to reign unchallenged. The Duke 
of Richmond, last of the Lancastrians, was summoned 
by a handful of barons, who still hoped better things 
for England than that she should be the plaything of a 
bloody tyrant, and the final struggle of the Roses was 
made on Bosworth Field, where Richard III. died, and 
with him the dynasty which, for good and ill, had ruled 
England for many generations. 



294: HENRY VII. 

The manner of Henry VII.'s accession to tlie throne 
marks the epoch toward which all previous reigns in 
English history had been contributing, viz., the voice 
of the people in the choice of a king. For Eichmond 
was seated upon the throne, and reigned, neither by 
hereditary right, by right of conquest, nor by being- 
lifted on the shields of a few barons, but through the 
voice of a free Parliament. In that act we perceive a 
denial of the extreme doctrine of hereditary right, the 
death of feudalism, and the voice of the commonalty. 
The commons were often thereafter to be oppressed, 
deluded, beaten back and silenced, but generation 
after generation found them lifting their heads higher 
and making their voices more distinctly heard. The 
monarchy remained, and still remains, but so limited 
and conditioned as to make England to-day one of the 
most soundly democratic of all earthly governments. 
The dull quiet of Henry YII. was succeeded by the 
lusty vigor and revolutionary movements of Henry 
YIII. Shakespeare ends his Epopee with the baptism 
of Elizabeth, not merely as a compliment to that vain 
but glorious virgin, but with dramatic point and his- 
toric truth. The whole movement of the Shakespea- 
rean epic, from the prologue of King John and Magna 
Charta, to the epilogue of Henry VIII. and the Eefor- 
mation, is toward that England which is best described 
and illuminated by the adjective Elizabethan. 

We trace the gradual separation of England from 
the continental complications which were inevitable 
with a family of half-foreign kings upon the throne ; 
the revolt of the barons against the tyranny and oppres- 
sion of absolute kingcraft ; the rejection of papal in- 



MORAL OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLATS. 295 

terference with the autonomy of the English Church ; 
and through these more conspicuous movements, the 
ever growing self-consciousness of the commons — 
until in the England of Elizabeth we find all these 
strands woven together in the imperishable fabric of a 
people fitted for, and destined to become the mother of 
new nations, to give law, language, and literature to a 
large part of the ci^dlized world. 

England thus had a destiny — and this is the moral 
we draw from Shakespeare's noble histories — with 
which was bound up the larger freedom, more liberal 
culture, more refined development of the human race. 
The Anglo-Saxon shut up in his " sea-girt isle," must 
first fight out the battle with himself before he could 
become a dominant force in the affairs of others. The 
feudal baron must become the loyal integer of the cen- 
tral government ; the feudal serf must become the free 
man ; the feudal state must become the government of, 
for, and by the people. All these changes would have 
been evils if suddenly grafted upon the stock of Eng- 
land's mediaeval life. They had their reasons for ex- 
istence pro tempore. They were not monuments, how- 
ever, but stepping-stones. They marked not points of 
complete development, but were merely registers of 
local and temporary accomplishment. In few and ad- 
mirable words the philosophic historian, John Henry 
Green, sums up the process, which Shakespeare in the 
ten Chronicle plays has so brilliantly set forth : " The 
structure of a feudal society fitted a feudal king v\^ith 
two great rival powers in the Baronage and the Church, 

. . but at the close of the Wars of the Roses these 
checks no longer served as restraints upon the action 



290 THE ENGLAND OF DESTINY. 

of the crown. With the growth of the Parliament the 
might of the Baronage as a separate constitutional ele- 
ment of the realm, even the separate influence of the 
Church, had fallen more and more into decay." 
.The restraints upon the action of the crown were 
henceforth to be more powerful, more influential, more 
constitutional, because they lay not with this or that 
class, but deep rooted in the life of the people. Parlia- 
ment was to be the reflection not only of the views of 
members but of constituencies. It was to be in touch 
with not only the political, but with the social, the re- 
ligious — with all phases of the people's expanding 
consciousness. Modern England is among nations not 
what its hereditary rulers choose, but what its people 
declare it must be. 



APPENDIX I. 

BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

SOURCES OF SHAKESPEAEE'S HISTORY. 

Edward Hall's Chronicle, 1577 ; reprinted 1809. 
Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle, 1577 ; reprinted 1807. 

In Holinshed is included Sir Thomas More's Life of Richard 

III (1557) and George Cavendish's Life of Wolsei/, written 

between 1554-57. 
Robert Fabyan's Chronicle, 1516 ; reprinted 1801. 
John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, commonly called the " Book 

of Martyrs," 1563 ; reprinted frequently, in x^art. 
E. de Monstrelet's Chronicle, about 1450 ; reprinted 1846. 
The Paston Letters, 1422-1509 ; reprinted in Bohn Library. 

MODERN HISTORIES REFERRED TO. 

Bishop Burnett's History of the Reformation. 

Hallam's History of the Middle Ages. 

Hume's History of England. 

Charles Knight's Popular History of England, 

J. H. Green's Histoi'y of the English People. 

Lingard's History of England. 

J. A. Fronde's History of England (for Henry VIII.). 

J. A. Froude's Katharine of Aragon. 

SHAKESPEAREANA. 

T. P. Courtenay's Commentaries on the Historical Plays. 2 vols. 
London, 1840. 



298 BTBLIOQRAPHT. 

Bishop Wordsworth's Notes on the Historical Plays. 3 vols. 
London and Edinburgh, 1883. (These Notes are seldom ori- 
ginal, but compiled from various sources.) 

Professor Henry Eeed's Lectures on English History. Philadel- 
phia, 1856. 

Wm. J. Eolfe's Histurlcal Plays. 10 vols. New York, 1892. 

Shakespearo's Library, six volumes, containing various plays, 
romances, novels, poems, and histories employed by 
Shakespeare. The second edition, edited by Wm. Carew 
Hazlitt. London, 1875. 

Augustine Skottowe's Life and Enquiries into the originality of 
the dramatic plots. London, 1824. 

Joseph Hunter's iVew; Illustrations of Shakespeare. 2 vols. Lon- 
don, 1845. 

Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women. Bohn Library. 

Helen Faucit Martin's Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters. 
London, 1888. 

Uhici's Sliakespeare's Dramatic Art. Bohn Library. 

Gervinus's Commentaries on Shakespeare, translated by F. Bun- 
nett. New York, 1883. 

A. W. Schlegel's Dramatic Literature. Bohn Library. 

Coleridge's Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare. Bohn Library. 

Wm. Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare. Bohn Library. 

Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 2 vols. New 
York, 1888. 

Eichard Grant White's Studies in Shakespeare. Boston, 1886. 

Charles Knight's Shakespeare Studies. London, 1851. 

H. Heine's Shakesj^eare's Maidens and Women, translated by C. 
G. Leland. New York, 1891. 

SPECIAL HISTOEIES. 

Gaii'dneY's Life of Blchard III., supports, in the main, Shake- 
speare's view of Eichard's character, and Miss Caroline F. 
Halstead's Life of Eichard III. seeks to combat the tradi- 
tional view. 



APPENDIX II. 

ON THE DATE OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF HENRY VIII. 

The date of Shakespeare's workmansliip on the 
" masque or show play," as Coleridge calls it, of Henry 
VIII., has an important influence on our reading of 
the play, and the period of history which it illuminates. 
And this date is in dispute. Charles Knight, who be- 
lieves in the later authorship (1612 or 1613), frankly 
confesses that the majority of commentators hold to 
the earlier composition (1600-1603) during the reign 
of Elizabeth. Malone, one of the most accurate and 
painstaking of the earlier Shakespearean critics, fol- 
lowed by such authorities as Skottowe and Drake, place 
it no later than 1603. This is my opiniou, and as it 
has something to do with our view of the play as a 
side-light on the Keformation, I shall take the reader 
over the path which leads to this conclusion. 

Malone and those who think with him base their 
belief on the internal evidence offered in the play 
itself, together with what knowledge we possess of 
Shakespeare, his times, and his manner of compo- 
sition. 

The opposition, holding to a date after Elizabeth's 
death, as late even as 1613, justify their argument by 
one internal and one external bit of evidence. The 
internal evidence is that apostrophe to James I., which 



300 CRANMER'S PROPHEOT, 

is put into the mouth of Cranmer at the bajDtism of 
Elizabeth : 

Nor shall this j)eace sleep with her : But as when 

The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, 

Her ashes new create another heir, 

As great in admiration as herself ; 

So shall she leave her blessedness to one 

(When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness) 

"Who from the sacred ashes of her honor 

Shall star-like rise as great in fame as she was, 

And so stand fixed : Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, 

That were the servants to this chosen infant 

Shall then be his ; and like a vine grow to him ; 

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine. 

His honor and the greatness of his name 

Shall be, and make new nations : He shall flourish. 

And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches 

To all the plains about him — Our children's children 

Shall see this, and bless heaven.' 

Now here is a very certain reference, not only to 
James, the successor of Elizabeth, but to those famous 
colonies to which he gave the impetus, and which in 
his time throve mightily. It was certainly not written 
before James came to the throne, for Elizabeth was 
the last of sovereigns to hear her successor greeted in 
such glowing terms. The passage is manifestly an in- 
terpolation. It was inserted in the speech of Cranmer 
when the play was first produced after James began to 
reign. It may have been the work of Shakespeare or 
of Fletcher, a question which may be left to the verbal 
critics, who trace the progress of Shakespeare's genius 
by "verse-tests," "stopped lines," "weak endings," 

1 Act v., Scene 4. 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE PLAT. 301 

etc. Neither are the advocates of an Elizabethan au- 
thorship alone in claiming this passage as a late emen- 
dation. Ulrici, one of the most earnest in behalf of the 
1613 date, admits it, following Hertzberg, another 
competent German critic (see Ulrici's " Dramatic Art," 
vol. ii., book vi., ch. xi., note). 

As opposed to this internal evidence adduced from 
one doubtful scene, we submit the internal evidence 
afforded by the whole play, and the external circum- 
stances which must have had an important influence in 
shaping its construction. 

There are a number of laudatory allusions to Eliza- 
beth in the play, such as that of the Lord Chamber- 
lain's apostrophe of Anne Boleyn : 

And who knows yet, 

But from this lady may proceed a gem 

To lighten all this isle.^ 

And Suffolk, again, speaking of Anne's approaching 
coronation, says : 

She is a gallant creature, and complete 
In mind and feature : I persuade me from her 
Will fall some blessing to his land, which shall 
In it be memoriz'd.^ 

The pleasant things said of Anne Bullen (as the play 
hath the name) are all indirect incense to the Yirgin 
Queen. The speech of Cranmer, so well known and 
quoted in part above, is fulsome in its prophecies of 
the royal infant. Now I maintain that these allusions 
to his predecessor on the throne could not have been 

1 Act II. , Scene 3. 2 Act III. , Scene 3. 



302 KING JAMES AND ELIZABETH. 

written for the ears of James, nor is it conceivable that 
they could have been written for public recitation after, 
and so near, the day of her death. Elizabeth had not 
only cut off the head of James's most unfortunate 
mother, but she had held himself in a sort of tutelage 
{vide their published correspondence) which must have 
been galling to a man so vain, irritable, weak, and con- 
scious of the scorn in which he was held. She scolded 
him like a virago. A man may stand such things per- 
force, but he does not forget them. James was a 
friend of the players. One of his first royal acts was 
in their favor and for their benefit. He was glad 
enough to escape from the gloom of the Scottish court, 
with its environment of sad-faced Puritanism, into the 
warm life and brilliant color of London. He set up as 
a theologian and was the foe of tobacco, but he did 
encourage the drama. Shakespeare was too much of 
a courtier to make the mistake of courting a dead 
sovereign. 

Ulrici fuddles over this difficulty of the later author- 
ship as follows : 

"However, the flattery to Elizabeth is also inter- 
woven with compliments to James." Now there is 
but one allusion or " compliment " to James in the 
whole play (quoted above), and Ulrici himself admits 
this to be an interpolation. 

So much for the internal evidence. 

We have to deal now with a single fact of external 
evidence, which is the real ground of belief in a late 
origin of the play. The Globe Theatre was burned on 
June 29, 1G13. Three references to the play being 
performed on that occasion lead critics to infer that it 



CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS. 303 

was Shakespeare's Henry VIII. Howes, the chroni- 
cler, describing the fire, says : " The house being filled 
with people to behold the play of Henry YIII." A 
letter of Sir Henry Wotton to his nephew also records 
the event and refers to what may have been the masque 
in Wolsey's house as the point at which the fire broke 
out : " The King's Players had a new play called ' All 
is True,' representing some principle pieces in the 
reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth," etc. In a 
letter from Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering 
we read : " While Burbage's company were acting at 
the Globe the play of Henry VIII. . . . the fire 
catched . . . consumed the whole house." 

There is nothing in all this testimony to disj)rove 
the Elizabethan authorship, except the words "new 
play " in the Wotton letter. It is argued that this was 
a first production, and, therefore, that it was newly 
written. This seems a very slender basis as against 
the internal evidence already noted. Many of Shake- 
speare's works were written long before they were pub- 
lished. It is merely an assumption also that this 
burned- out play was Shakespeare's. There was another 
on the general theme of Henry VIIL, well known at 
the time. Sir Henry Wotton's name for the play, " All 
is True," gives color to the suggestion that it was not 
the Shakespearean work at all. But the chief reliance 
of the late-date argument is on the alleged fact that 
this is the first mention of the play, and that it does 
not appear again until incorporated in the first folio. 
And yet we have the record (all thanks to the labors 
of Mr. Fleay, whose zealous and monumental toil is a 
fair set-off for some fantasticisms of criticism) of the 



304 EARLY AUTHORSHIP PREFERRED. 

Stationer's Register, answering to our copyright entry, 
for, among other years, that of 1604-5, in which, under 
date of February 12th, is the record of "King Henry 
YIII., an interkide." 

This seems to the ordinary reader, and even to a 
modest student of the times of Elizabeth, to offer at 
least a fair ground of presumption that Shakespeare's 
Henry VIII. is noted previous to the fire of 1613. 
The critics who are wedded to their idols of metrical 
tests, and will allow no facts to interfere with their 
theories, say practically, as Hudson says literally: 
" There is no good reason for ascribing this piece to 
Shakespeare : on the contrary, there is ample reason 
for supposing it to have been a play by Samuel Eowley, 
entitled, * When you See Me You Know Me ; or. The 
Famous Chronicle History of King Henry VIII.' " 

On the contrary, there is ample reason — save the fact 
that the adjective " new " is used in familiar correspon- 
dence, as it might be nowadays concerning a revival of 
the same play, which would be new to this generation 
— why this entry should refer to Shakespeare's play. 

On the whole, therefore, we must concede the earlier 
authorship, as admitted by the greater number of 
Shakespearean critics. My own theory of the history 
of this often-disputed play is as follows : 

It was constructed, as Knight says, "an historical 
drama to complete his great series," in the last years, 
perhaps the last year, of Elizabeth's reign. At just 
this date (1603-4) broke out the Great Plague, where- 
of more than thirty thousand people died in Lon- 
don alone. The theatres were closed for a time, and 
when they reopened James was King of England. The 



HISTORY OF THE PLAY. 305 

play of Henry YIII. was therefore laid aside, or per- 
haps forgotten, save for its possible entry in the Sta- 
tioner's Register. In the course of a few years it was 
revived (possibly, according to many writers, for the 
festival attendant upon the marriage of Elizabeth, 
daughter of James, to the Elector Palatine), and called 
a new play because it was practically new to the stage 
of that period. The passage concerning James was 
inserted to throw a sop to the vanity of the reigning 
monarch, and to temper the laudation of the Virgin 
Queen, his predecessor. The references to "new na- 
tions " were evidently to commend the play to the pit 
and galleries, crowded with people who were all more 
or less touched with an enthusiasm for colonization, 
and had ventures on the seas. 

This seems to me, without unduly straining or over- 
looking any important point of the evidence, to include 
and account for all divergent views. If Elizabeth did 
not see the play acted, she heard it read, as I believe, 
and it was written for this destiny. Otherwise there 
would have been no such gentle handling of Henry 
YIII. and Anne Boleyn, and we should have missed 
the clever workmanship which places the divorced 
Katharine in such a tender and touching relief, with- 
out reflecting upon the legitimacy of England's Yirgin 
Queen. 



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APPENDIX IV. 

ON THE GENEALOGY AND CONNECTIONS OF THE HOUSES 
OF YORK AND LANCASTER. 

For the better guidance of the student I have ap- 
pended a list of the kings of England whose reigns are 
touched upon in Shakespeare's play, together with 
their immediate ancestry.^ It has been convenient to 
condense this list somewhat, and I did not think it 
necessary to give the whole table of descendants from 
Edward III. Only those sons' names are mentioned 
with whom Shakespeare directly or mdirectly deals. 
The " seven phials of his sacred blood," in order of 
seniority, are as follow : 

Edward the Black ^i-ince, WilHam of Hatfield (who died in 
cliildliood), Lionel, Duie of Clarence ; John of Gaunt, Duke of 
Lancaster ; Edward of Lan^iey, William of Windsor, and Tlio- 
pas of Gloucester. From the last mentioned were descended 
the Dukes of Buckingham, who figure in " Henry VI.," *'Eicli- 
ard III.," and " Henry VIIL" 

A complete and detailed list of all the kings, their ancestry 
and posterity, may be found in Professor Wm. Francis Allen's 
little Reader^ s Guide to English History, to which I acknowledge 
indebtedness. 

The following extract from "Henry VI." is a verbal 
statement, with one or two inaccuracies only, of what 

1 Appendix III. 



308 SHAKESPEARE'S GENEALOGY. 

the above table contains. It is from a conversation 
between Eicliard (Earl of Cambridge and afterward 
Duke of York), Salisbury, and Warwick, in which the 
former sets forth his title, " which is infallible, to Eng- 
land's crown." ' 

York. Edward the Third, my lord, had seven sons, 

The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of 

Wales. 
The second, William of Hatfield, and the third, 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence ; next to whom 
Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster ;• 
The fifth was Edward Langlev, Duke of York ; 
The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of 

Gloucester ; ^ 
William of Windsor was the seventh and last. 
Edward, the Black Prince, died before his father. 
And left behind him Eichard, his only son, 
Who after Edward the Third's death reigned as king. 
Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, 
The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt, 
Crowned by the name of Henry the Fourth, 
Seized on the realm, deposed the rightful king, 
Sent his poor queen to France, from whence she came. 
And him to Pomfret, where, as all you know. 
Harmless Eichard was murdered traitorously. 

Warwick. Father, the duke has told the truth ; 

Thus got the House of Lancaster the crown. 

York. Which now they hold by force and not by right ; 

For Eichard the First's son's heir being dead 
The issue of the next son should have reigned. 

Sal. But William of Hatfield died without an heir. 

York. The third son, Duke of Clarence (from whose line 

I claim the crown), had issue, Philippe, a daughter, 

1 Henry VI., Part II., Act II., Scene 3. 

2 The poet reverses the actual order of the last two names. 



RIVAL CLAIMS OF THE HOUSES. 309 

Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. 
Edmund had issue, Roger, Earl of March ; 
Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne, and Eleanor. 

Sal. This Edmund in the reign of Bolingbroke, 

As I have read, laid claim unto the crown ; 
And but for Owen Glendower had been king,' 
Who kept him in captivity till he died.'^ 
But to the rest. 

Yo7'k. His eldest sister, Anne, 

My mother, being heir unto the crown, 
Married Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who was son 
To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third's fifth 

son. 
By her I claim the kingdom. She was heir 
To Roger, Earl of March, who was the son 
Of Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippe 
Sole daughter unto Lionel, Duke of Clarence ; 
So if the issue of the elder son 
Succeed before the younger, I am king. 

Wa7\ What plain proceeding is more plain than this ? 

Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt, 
The fourth son. York claims it from the third. 
Till Lionel's issue fails, his should not reign. 
It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee. 
And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock. 

This passage sets forth the rival claims of the Yorkists 
and Lancastrians, in the settling of which the Wars of 
the Eoses were invoked. 

1 As noted in the Chapter on Henry IV. , the poet, misled by the chron- 
icler, confuses Edmund Mortimer, who was a captive to Glendower,' with 
his nephew (the heir), the young Earl of March, who does not appear in 
the play. 

2 Another error of the poet. It was not Mortimer who died a captive to 
Glendower, but another son-in-law of the Welsh chieftain, Lord Grey of 
Ruthven, 



INDEX 



Agincourt, battle of, the central 
incident of Henry V., 135 ; scenes 
before the battle, 156 ; an accident, 
158. 

Anachronisms of Shakespeare, 4, 13, 
23, 42, 201, 261. 

Anglo Saxon, identity of, with Nor- 
man conquerors, 20, 21, 295 ; the 
race of destiny, 4, 21. 

Anne, the Lady Neville, courted by 
Gloster, 212, 232 ; explanation of 
consent to marriage with Gloster, 
213; coronation, 229, 280; death, 
234 ; sorrows of, 238. 

Appendix I., bibliography, 297-8. 

Appendix II., on the date of the 
authorship of Henry VIII., 299- \ 
305. ! 

Appendix IH., table of Shakespeare's ' 
English kings, 306. j 

Appendix IV., on the genealogy and 
connections of the Houses of York 
and Lancaster, 307-9. \ 

Armada, Spanish, 19. 

Arthur, Plantagenet, claims of, to 
the English throne, 25, 27 ; captiv- 
ity and death, 29; misconception 
of his political importance, 30; i 
kept alive in the drama by poetic 
license, 30, 45 ; Grant White's 
comment on his character draw- 
ing, 46. 

Bacon's, Lord, definition of the his- 
torical drama, 3. 



Barnet, battle of, 200. 

Beaufort, Cardinal, 185, 188, 190. 

Berkeley, Sir William, on schools 
and printing, 195. 

Bibliography, 297. 

Black Prince, death of, 59. 

Blanche of Castile, marriage with 
Lewis, 29, 33 ; sorrows of, 39. 

Boleyn, Anne, vide Bulien. 

Bolingbroke, 9, 10 ; events leading to 
banishment of, 64 ; powerful con- 
nections, (5Q ; estates confiscated, 
68 ; returns from exile, 70 ; allies 
flock to, 71 ; reasons for rebellion 
of, 71 ; usurpation of, 80, 86 ; com- 
parison with King John, 86 ; al- 
tered character, 88 ; vide also 
Henry IV. 

Bosworth field, 11 ; battle of, 236, 
237. 

Buckingham, Duke of (in Henry 
VI.), opposed to the king's party, 
185. 

Buckingham, Duke of (in Richard 
III.), conspiracy with Gloster, 223 ; 
assists Gloster to the throne, 226 ; 
defection from Gloster, 233 ; capt- 
ure and execution, 234. 

Buckingham, Duke of (in Henry 
VIII.), spokesman of feeling 
against Wolsey, 247 ; arrested for 
treason, 249 ; charges against, 249 ; 
popular feeling with, 250 ; a vic- 
tim of Wolsey, 250; farewell speech 
and prophecy, 251. 



312 



INDEX. 



Bullen, Anne, a believer in the 
reformed doctrines, 260, 288 ; 
crowned at Westminster, 258, 2G4 ; 
Shakespeare's portrait of, 264; at 
the masque in Wolsey's house, 265, 
280 ; Mrs. Jameson's comment on, 
266 ; sincerity of, 267 ; character 
of, 266 ; after guilt or innocence 
of, 273. 

Bulwer Lytton's novel. Last of the 
Barons, on Edward IV., 220. 

Burnet, Bishop, History of the Re- 
formation, quoted on Wolsey's in- 
fluence with the king, 263. 

Bushy, Bagot, etc., 63. 

Cade, Jack, character of, in dispute, 
192 ; connection with Wars of the 
Roses, 192 ; temporary success of 
the rebellion of, 193 ; defeat and 
death, 193; claims to royal pedi- 
gree, 193 ; contempt for grammar 
schools, 195. 

Carlisle's Bishop of, prophecy on the 
deposition of Richard 11., 68, 83, 
95. 

Carlyle, Thomas, on the England of 
1200, 12. 

Cavendish, George, author of a Life 
of Wolsey, 241, 247. 

Cavendish, Thomas, 4. 

Cervantes, travesty of chivalry in 
Don Quixote, 125. 

Charles of Spain, connection with 
the divorce of Katharine, 255, 256. 

Charles VII. of France, proclaims 
himself king, 172 ; begins to drive 
out the English, 173 ; crowned by 
Joan of Arc at Rheims, 176. 

Chatillon,the French ambassador, 25. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 60, 89. 

Chivalry, decay of, in 14th century, 
124 ; Franco-; Sacchetti on, 125 ; 
FalstafF, a type of pseudo-, 124. 



Chorus, Shakespeare's use of , 135 ; 
Dr. Johnson's criticism on the 
employment of, 151. 

Chronology of King John, 17; be- 
tween John and Richard II. , 55 ; 
of Richard II., 56 ; of Henry IV., 
92; of Henry V., 132; of Henry 
VI., 167; of Edward IV., Edward 
v., and Richard III., 205 ; of Hen- 
ry VII., 243 ; of Henry VIII. , 243. 

Church of England, autonomy of, as- 
serted by King John, 35; in Henry 
V.'s reign, 139, 140, 142 ; in Shake- 
speare's day, 253. 

Clarence, Duke of, death and attain- 
der, 211 ; first English book dedi- 
cated to, 239. 

Clergy, English, attitude of, toward 
French wars of Henry V., 1 39, 144. 

Cobham, Eleanor, ambition of, 188 ; 
accused of sorcery, 188 ; does pen- 
ance in London streets, 1 89. 

Coleridge's comment on Shakespeare 
and Milton, 1 ; on Richard II., 79, 
87. 

Colonization of the new world in 
Elizabeth's day, 4, 300, 305. 

Comedy of Henry IV., its function 
in the play, 96, 123 ; of Henry V., 
147, 148, 153. 

Commons, English, growing power 
of, 89 ; assist Henry IV. against 
the nobles, 96; in Henry IV.'s 
reign, 101 ; of Kent, complaints 
in Cade's rebellion, 192 ; increas- 
ing intelligence through the spread 
of literature, 240 ; in Henry VII.'s 
reign, 294. 

Compact, the broken, of Henry IV. 
with the rebels, 114. 

Constance, the Lady, denounces the 
treaty of John and Philip, 33 ; 
character of, 52 ; rivalry with 
Elinor, 52. 



INDEX 



313 



Constance, council of, 139. 

Courtenay's, Tlios., Peregrine Com- 
mentaries, 2, 53, 143, 213, 263, 279. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, prophecy of 
the England of Elizabeth and 
James, 5, 300 ; opinion of, that 
the divorce might be granted apart 
from Rome, 263 ; dissolves Kath- 
arine's marriage witli Hem y, 263 ; 
typical representative of the new 
faith, 28S ; arraigned for heresy, 
288 ; godfather of Elizabeth, 289. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 26. 

Crusades in the 1-1 th century, 121 ; 
Gibbon's estimate of Henry IV. 's 
sincerity, 122. 

DiYOKCE of Katharine of Aragon, 
first bruited, 255 ; political com- 
plications of, 255, 262 ; Wolsey sus- 
pected of contriving, 256, 280 ; 
origin of the action for, 256 ; 
popular judgment of Henry's sin- 
cerity, 257 ; Wolsey's real policy 
concerning, 259, 281 ; Henry's 
share in it, 262 ; pronounced by 
Cranmer, 263. 

Douglass, Earl of, alliance with the 
Percys, 102. 

Drake, Sir Francis, 4. 



Edward I. , events in reign of, 58. 

Edward 11. , events in reign of, 58. 

Edward III., events in reign of, 59. 

Edward IV. , 10 ; crowned king, 198 ; 
character of, 198, 220 ; marriage 
of, 199 ; dethroned by Warwick, 
200 ; regains the crown, 200 ; 
reigns in peace after the civil wars, 
211 ; parties at the court of, 215 ; 
grief over the death of his brother 
Clarence, 214 ; reconciles court 
factions at his death-bed, 219 ; at- 



tacks upon the character of, 224, 
225 ; summary of reign, 293. 

Edward V. , 10 ; chronology of, 205 ; 
preparations for coronation of, 220 ; 
peers swear loyalty to, 222 ; lodged 
in the Tower awaiting coronation, 
223 ; imprisoned, 239 ; disappears 
from history, 233 ; summary of 
reign, 10, 293. 

Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV.; 
nobles resent her marriage, 215 ; ad- 
vance of her family to power, 215 ; 
resents the taunts of her enemies, 
216 ; friends of, arrested, 221 ; flies 
to sanctuary, 223; plea for the 
young princes, 230; hoodwinks 
Richard III., 235; summary of 
character, 288. 

Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, her 
struggle with the papacy, 36; 
baptism of, 247, 289; the golden 
age of, 4, 5, 0, 19, 36 ; references 
to, in play of Henry VIII. , 289, 301 , 

England, in Shakespeai-e's day, 4, 
19, 36, 253 ; of King John, 8, 19 ; 
Elizabethan, described by Motley, 
4 ; intellectual soil of, 6, 290; Nor- 
man conquest of, 20 ; "John of 
Gaunt's apostrophe to, 14 ; rivalry 
with France, 135 ; desire of, for 
war (in time of Henry V.), 138, 
148, 149 ; Catholic make up of 
the armies of, 154 ; social life in 
Henry VI. 's reign, 201; the new 
nation of the Tudors, 240 ; of the 
pre-Reformation period, 6, 248 ; 
relation of, to the Papal See, 36 ; 
dominant note of, in the time of 
Shakespeare, 286. 

English language, becomes the na- 
tional tongue, 20, 60. 

Fabyan, the chronicler, quoted, 63, 
225. 



314 



INDEX. 



Falconbridge, Philip, estimate of the 
faith of kings, 31 ; type of Eng- 
lish manhood, 50. 

Falstaff, original of the character, 
91 ; a type of pseudo-chivalry, 
124 ; connection with the story of 
feudalism, 123 ; on the accession 
of Prince Hal, 126 ; reproved by 
Henry V., 128 ; death of, 130, 134 ; 
type of the youth of Henry V., 
129. 

Feudalism, the passing of, 93, 95; 
death-blow of, 96, 106, 123. 

Field of the Cloth of Gold, 248, 278. 

Folio first, 1, 16, 91, 131, 166, 204. 

Fox, Book of Martyrs, 241 , 247, 289. 

France, rivalry with England, 135 ; 
internal condition previous to 
Agincourt, 149 ; failure to esti- 
mate English strength and prow- 
ess, 150, 157 ; suffering of the 
peasantry of, 174. 

French wars (of Henry VI.), Bed- 
ford at first successful, 172; alli- 
ance of Burgundy with English, 
172; alliance broken, 180; loss of 
the French conquests, 181 ; Heine's 
estimate of the, 164 ; harm of, to 
England, 181. 

Froude's apology for Henry VIH. 
commented upon, 254, 273. 

Gaunt, John of, apostrophe to 
England, 14. 

Ghosts, in Richard III., 236. 

Gibbon's estimate of Henry IV. 's 
sincerity, 122. 

Gilbert, Humphre}"-, 4. 

Glendower, Owen, 94 ; character of, 
102, 113. 

Gloster (Richard), Shakespeare's 
portrait of, 10; genesis of ambi- 
tious schemes of, 202 ; vide also 
Richard III. 



Gloucester, Duke of (in Richard II. ), 
61, 62, 65. 

Gloucester, Duke of (in Henry VI.), 
head of the war party, 185 ; at- 
tacked by the nobles for patriot- 
ism, 187 ; punishment of, through 
his wife, 188 ; accusation and 
death, 190. 

Green, John Henry, comment on the 
Wars of the Roses, 295. 

Hal, Prince, relations with his 
father, 105; at Shrewsbury, 106; 
contrasted with Hotspur, 109, 
110; incident of the crown, 117; 
thoughts at his father's death- 
bed, 118; extenuation of his 
youthful wildness, 125; dread of 
the nobles upon his accession, 126, 
127 ; transformation of character, 
128, 129 ; vide also Henry V. 

Harfleur, siege of, 151. 

Harold, last of the Saxon kings, 19. 

Hastings, Lord. Deceived by Rich- 
ard Gloster, 222 ; stands in the 
way of Gloster's conspiracy, 223 ; 
executed, 224. 

Hawkins, Francis, 4. 

Heine's criticism of Dr. Johnson, 
269 ; on the historical plays, 3 ; on 
the English motive in the French 
wars, 164. 

Henry II., father of King John, at 
the tomb of Becket, 33. 

Henry III., reign of, 9, 58. 

Henry IV., origin and sources of the 
play, 91 ; chronology of, 92 ; in- 
tention of making a pilgrimage, 
93, 117, 121 ; troubled reign of, 94 
attempted reforms of, 95, 99 
strength with the people, 96, 101 
chief events of the reign of, 96 
accused of trickery in mounting to 
the throne, 100 ; moral weakness 



INDEX. 



of, 104 ; weakness of the conspir- 
acy against him, 101, 102, 107; 
nemesis of the conscience of, 105, 
120; fears for his son, 105, 111; 
estimate of Richard II. 's character, 
105; last hours of, 116, 117; final 
charge to his son, 119, 138 ; on his 
own usurpation, 120 ; summary of 
reign, 9, 123, 292 ; vide also Bol- 
ingbroke. 

Henry V., 9 ; sources of the play, 
131 ; chronology of, 132 ; altered 
character of, 135 ; epical quality 
of the play, 135 ; lays claim to the 
French crown, 13J ; shallowness 
of the claims, 137 ; real purpose in 
the French wars, IBS, 140, 144, 
163 ; salic law a stumbling-block, 
141 ; fears of a Scotch invasion, 
143 ; insulting treatment of his 
embassy, 145 ; punishes a conspir- 
acy against the throne, 147 ; lays 
siege to Harfleur, 151 ; march to 
Calais, 152 ; courage under disas- 
trous conditions, 153, 156 ; the ac- 
cidental battle and victory of 
Agincourt, 158 ; forms alliance 
with Burgundy, 159 ; treaty of 
Troyes, 161 ; summary of char- 
acter of, 161 ; wooing of Kath- 
arine, 162 ; type of the English 
ideal of royalty, 164 ; marriage, 
165 ; death and burial, 172 ; quar- 
rels at court arising from his 
death, 173 ; summary of reign, 9, 
292. 

Henry VI. , 9 ; foundation plays for, 
166 ; chronology of, 167 ; disputed 
authorship of, 170 ; confusion of 
historical events in chronicle and 
play, 171 ; Henry in infancy be- 
comes king of France, 172 ; 
crowned at Paris, 180; French 
conquests gradually narrowed, 181 ; 



dissensions in the court of, 182 ; 
marriage with Margaret of Anjou 
a cause of discontent, 185 ; weak- 
ness of character, 186, 196; con- 
trast of, with John, 10; contrast 
of, with Richard II., 186; help- 
lessness in the York rising, 196 ; 
Parliament excludes his son, and 
recognizes the York claim, 198 ; 
flies from defeat, 198 ; restored 
temporarily to the throne by War- 
wick, 200 ; final dethronement of, 

! 200; death of, 202; summary of 

reign, 9, 292. 
Henry YIL, 13 ; chronology of, 242 
crowned on the battle-field, 237 

I marries Elizabeth of York, 238 

i accession of, marks a significant 
epoch, 245, 294 ; summary of reign, 

I 294 ; vide also Richmond. 
Henry VIII., importance of date 
of play as affecting its historical 
treatment. Appendix, page 299 ; 
chronologj', 243; sources of, 241, 
247, 269 ; date of, considered, 245 ; 
Appendix, page 299 ; character 
of Henry on his accession, 245 ; 
change in, when play begins, 246 ; 
writes book against Luther, 247; 
repudiates Wolsey's oppression of 



the 



commons. 



?52 ; Shakespeare's 



refining of his character, 252, 253 ; 
domestic history of, 254 ; political 
complications in the divorce of, 
255, 262 ; conscientious scruples 
of, 256, 257 ; popular judgment of, 
257 ; appeals to the universities, 
262 ; makes Anne Boleyn queen, 
263 ; appearance at the Masque in 
Wolsey's house, 265, 280 ; extenu- 
ation of conduct in the divorce 
affair, 257, 275 ; affected by Kath- 
arine's nobility of character, 270 ; 
possible evidence of repentance, 



316 



INDEX. 



276; rescues Cranmer from the 
council, 289 ; summary of reign, 
12, 294. 

Historical plays, 2; Shakespeare's 
object in writing, 2, 6 ; moral of, 
7, 295 ; Schlegel on the unity of, 
7 ; contents of, 8, 291 ; patriotic 
and religious bias of, 13, 158, 175 ; 
contribution of, to philosophy of 
history, 31 ; gap between King 
John and Richard II. , 57, 58 ; 
connection between, 58, 109 ; 
"Pierce Penniless" on the value 
of, 6, 182 ; value of, summed iip, 
3 ; framework of the story of, 7 ; 
movement of, culminating in 
Elizabeth, 11, 294 ; Heine on, 
3 ; Knight on, 2, 171 ; Coleridge 
on, 1. 

History, English, Shakespeare's con- 
tribution to, 2, 3, 6, 182, 291. 

Holmeden Hill, battle of, 94, 98. 

Hotspur slurs on the title of Henry 
IV., 99 ; refuses the prisoners to 
the king. 98 ; defeat and death at 
Shrewsbury, 106 ; contrasted with 
Prince Hal, 109 ; contemporary 
with Bolingbroke, 110 ; domestic 
relations of, 111 ; character of, 
112 ; craving for battle illustrated, 
138. 

Hudson, Henry, the commentator, 
27, 140, 142, 213, 269, 304. 

Hume's description of the Interdict, 
38. 

Huss, John, 139. 

Innocent III., Pope. Quarrel with 
King John, S3 ; lays England un- 
der an interdict, 37 ; excommuni- 
cates King John, 38 ; declares a 
crusade against John, 38. 

Interdict of Innocent III., one of its 
indirect results, 89 ; Hume on, 38. 



Ireland, conquest of, 59 ; war with, 
in reign of Richard II., 62, 69. 

Isabel, Queen of Richard II. Mis- 
taken age of, 60 ; dramatic impor- 
tance of, 60. 



James I., 4, 5, 289, ?:90, 300, 302. 

Jameson, Mrs., comment on Anne 
Boleyn, 266. 

Joan of Arc marks an historic centre 
of Henry VI., 171 ; youth of, 175 ; 
Shakespeare's biassed portrait of, ■ 
175, 176 ; joins the camp of Charles 
VII., 175 ; relieves Orleans and 
crowns Charles at Rheims, 176; 
taken prisoner, condemned for sor- 
cery, and burned, 176; Knight's 
endorsement of Shakespeare's 
treatment considered, 178; recent 
canonization of, 176. 

John, King, the play of, 8 ; prologue 
to the series, 8, 9, 10 ; England in 
time of, 8, 12 ; anti-papal spirit 
of, 13 ; foundation play, 16, 24 ; 
chronology of, 17 ; influence of its 
date in its composition, 19 ; a pic- 
ture of a transition stage in Eng- 
lish history, 22 ; three historic 
centres of, 23 ; not based on the 
chronicles, 24 ; events preceding 
the reign of, 19-22 ; alleged usur- 
pation of, 25 ; legal rights to 
the throne, 26, 27; treaty with 
France, 28 ; accused of Arthur's 
death, 29 ; quarrel with the Pope, 
33 ; origin of the quarrel, 34 ; defies 
the papal legate, 36 ; clergy and 
barons arrayed against him, 40 ; 
superstitious fears played upon, 
41 ; yields his kingdom as a fief to 
the Pope, 42 ; hangs Peter of Pom- 
fret, 43 ; grants and annuls Magna 
Charta, 43, 44 ; death of, 47 ; sub- 



INDEX. 



317 



picion that he was poisoned, 48; 
moral of the play, 52. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, comment on 
Katharine of Aragon, 268 ; on 
Shakespeare's use of the chorus, 
151 ; Heine's comment on, 269. 

Katharine, Princess of France, 
wooing of, by Henry V., 162. 

Katharine of Aragon, pleads for the 
over-taxed people, 251 ; accuses 
Wolsey, 251 ; not pitted against 
Anne in the play, 255 ; thrust at 
the king's conscience, 258; actions 
in the affair of the divorce, 268 ; 
Dr. Johnson's enthusiasm con- 
cerning, 268 ; Heine's estimate of, 
269; fine drawing of her charac- 
ter, 269 ; lays the tragedy of her 
life at Wolsey's door, 270 ; rejects 
title of Princess Dowager, 263, 
271 ; divorced by Cranmer, 263 ; 
forgiveness of her enemaes, 272 ; 
commends her daughter Mary and 
her servants to the king, 272 ; re- 
lations with Wolsey, 281 ; death 
ol 273. 

Kings table of Shakespeare's Eng- 
lish, 306. 

Knight, Charles, comment on the 
historical value of the plays, 2, 171 ; 
defence of Shakespeare's treat- 
ment of Joan of Arc, 178 ; quoted 
as to statutes declaring Richard 
Gloster king, 228. 

Lancaster, house of, 184; fall of, 
198 ; Duke of, John of Gaunt, 63 ; 
Apostrophe of, to England, 14. 

Langton, Stephen, named Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury by the Pope, 
34 ; nomination of, rejected by 
King John, 34 ; received as Arch- 
bishop by John, 42 ; joins the 



barons to wrest Magna Charta from 
John, 46; joins barons against 
Pope and King, 46, 

Lewis, Dauphin of France, married 
to Blanche of Castile, 29, 33 ; sum- 
moned to lead English barons 
against King John, 44 ; suspicions 
of his good faith, 47 ; forced re- 
turn to France, 47. 

Literature, dawn of English, 90 ; 
progress in Richard III.'s reign, 
239. 

Macbeth, 3. 

Magna Charta, 8 ; not mentioned in 
play of King John, 12, 23 ; occasion 
of, 43 ; granted by King John, 43 ; 
nullified by the king, 44 ; influence 
of, in Edward III.'s reign, 59. 

Manuel, Emperor (Greek), visit to 
England in Henry IV. 's reign, 122. 

Margaret of Anjou, 9 ; marriage 
with Henry VI., 186; her mascu- 
line vigor, 187 ; relations with 
Suffolk, 191 ; the real strength of 
the Lancastrian party, 187, 197 ; 
defeat of, 198 ; sues for help of 
France, 199 ; alliance of, with War- 
wick, 200 ; alternate victory and de- 
feat, 200 ; exile of, 201 ; character 
of, 201, 238 ; reappearance by poetic 
license in reign of Richard III., 
201, 216 ; this anachronism inter- 
prets history, 216 ; curses her en- 
emies, 217 ; appeal of, to the judg- 
ment of history, 238. 

Mere's, Francis, Wit's Treasury, 16, 
54, 91, 204. 

Milton, John, Coleridge's reference 
to Paradise Lost, 2. 

More, Sir Thomas, 204. 

Mortimer, Edmund, rightful heir 
after Richard II., 86, 97, 309; 
confusion v.ith uncle of same 



318 



INDEX. 



name, 97 ; Richard said to have 
declared him his heir, 97 ; treason- 
able plots centring in, 103, 139, 
146. 

Mortimer, Edmund (uncle to the 
above), taken captive by the 
Welsh, 97, 309 ; marries Glendow- 
er's daughter, 97 ; ransom of, re- 
fused by Henry IV. , 98. 

Motley, John Lothrop, 4. 

Mowbray, Earl of, quarrel with Bol- 
ingbroke, 64 ; connection with 
Gloucester's death, 64 ; accusation 
and defence of, 64 ; exile of, 66 ; 
loyalty of, to Richard II., 66; 
death of, 67. 

Nash, Thomas (the poet), quoted on 
the historical drama, 6, 183. 

Norman conquest, 19, 20. 

Northumberland, Earl of, weakness 
of his rebellion against Henry IV., 
101 ; personal animus of, in the re- 
volt, 98 ; progress of the revolt, 
103; "Crafty sick," 107, 108; 
character of, 107, 115 ; comparison 
with Duke of York (in Richard 
II.), 115; final rebellion and death, 
116. 



PANDULPH,the papal legate, launches 
the curse of Rome, 35 ; is defied 
by King John, 35 ; political ethics 
of, 40. 

Parliament, English, first sum- 
moned, 58 ; influence on develop- 
ment of the people, 89. 

Percy, family allied with Boling- 
broke, 71 ; vide Northumberland 
and Hotspur. 

Peter of Pomf ret, prophesy of, that 
John should lose his crown, 41 ; 
hung by order of John, 43. 



Philip (of France), espouses cause of 
Arthur Plantagenet, 25 ; treats 
with John without regard to 
Arthur's claim, 28; prepares to 
invade England, 38 ; forbidden to 
make the campaign after John's 
submission, 42. 

Fierce, Penniless, quotations from, 
on the value of the historical plays, 
6, 182. 

Plantagenet, House of, 7 ; decline 
and fall of the, the framework of 
Shakespeare's plays, 7, 291 ; de- 
cline of, 58, 206 ; seeds of dissolu- 
tion sown, 9, 87, 392. 

Primogeniture, no strict law of, in 
England, 26. 

Printing, influence of, in England's 
renaissance, 90 ; Caxton encouraged 
by the Woodvilles, 239 ; the art 
of, encouraged by Richard III., 
239. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 4. 

Reed, Professor Henry, 2. 

Reformation, English, 12 ; pulpit ut- 
terances, 6 ; indication of, in King 
John, 49, 89 ; in the early days of 
Henry V., 139; in the play of 
Henry VIII., 12, 247, 353, 282, 286, 
288 ; value of the play of Henry 
VIII. in studying the history of, 
261 ; connection of, with downfall 
of Wolsey, 282; dawn of, 286; 
Henry VIII. 's affairs, an occasion 
not a cause of the, 2S7. 

Richard II., 9; sources of the play, 
54, 60 ; chronology of, 56 ; early 
days of the reign of, 61 ; education 
of, 61 ; anachronisms of the play, 
60, 61 ; political situation at be- 
ginning of reign, 61, 63 ; grows 
despotic, 62 ; farms out the realm, 
62 ; analysis of the play, 64 ; sus- 



INDEX. 



319 



pected of Gloucester's murder, 64: ; 
refuses to allow the duel at Coven- 
try to proceed, 66 ; relations with 
Mowbray and Bolingbroke, 66 ; 
connection of these events with 
the Wars of the Roses, 67 ; confis- 
cates Bolingbroke's estate, 68 ; in- 
decision in the presence of rebel- 
lion, 73 ; lands in England, 73 ; 
varying moods, 75 ; betrayed into 
Bolingbroke's hands, 76; humility 
of, in misfortune, 77, 78 ; charac- 
ter of, 78 ; Coleridge's comment 
on, 79, 87 ; articles of his impeach- 
ment, 81 ; abdication and dethrone- 
ment, 81 ; death of, 84 ; fable of 
his escape, 84 ; summary of his 
character, 87 ; summary of his 
reign, 291. 
Richard III. , 4 ; sources of the play, 
204 ; chronologj^ of, 205 ; summary 
of reign, 10, 11, 293 ; difference in 
treatment from other chronicle 
plays, 207 ; reasons for the popu- 
lar estimate of his character, 307 ; 
Shakespeare's portrait from the ! 
chronicles, 204, 208 ; political situ- 
ation when the play opens, 209 ; ! 
courts Anne Neville, 212, 232 ; ob- i 
ject of the mamage, 214 ; makes 
capital out of factional quarrels of I 
the court, 215 ; soliloquy on his \ 
own hypocrisy, 218; journeys to 
London ostensibly to crown Ed- I 
ward v., 220 ; swears loyalty to, | 
and is appointed protector of, the | 
king, 222 ; plots against Hastings 
and others who stand in his way, i 
223 ; pretends to refuse the crown, | 
227 ; his scruples overcome, 227 ; j 
his title affirmed by Parliament, ! 
227 ; crowned with Anne as queen, 
230 ; study of his ambitious ca- i 
reer, 330 ; defection and death of 



Buckingham, 233 ; after Anne's 
death, woos his niece Elizabeth, 
234 ; meets Earl of Richmond at 
Bosworth Field, 236 ; visions be- 
fore the day of battle, 236 ; defeat 
and death, 337. Vide^ also, Glos- 
ter. 

Richmond, Earl of, a possible rival 
to Richard III., 210, 22S ; predic- 
tions of Henry VI. concerning, 
228 ; genealogy, 234 ; driven back 
from first invasion, 234 ; lands in 
England, 336 ; defeats Richard HI. 
at Bosworth Field, 237 ; crowned 
on the battle-field as Henry VIT., 
237 ; title ratified by Parliament, 
338, 294. Vide, also, Henry VII. 

Rivers, Lord, connection with litera- 
ture in Richard III. , 239. 

Rowley, Samuel, authorship of 
" Troublesome Raigne," 24 ; auth- 
orship of a chronicle play of Henry 
VIII., 304. 

Sacchetti, Franco, quoted on the 
decay of chivalry, 125. 

Salic Law, 141, 143. 

Say, Lord, killed in Cade's rebellion, 
193, 195. 

Schlegel's note on the unity of the 
historical plays, 7 ; on anachron- 
isms, 261. 

Scotland, independence won, 59 ; 
border troubles with England, 94 . 
fear of invasion from (in Henry 
v.), 143. 

Scott, Sir Walter, his delineation of 
Margaret of Anjou, 201. 

Shakespeare contributions to Eng- 
lish history, 3, 6, 7, 31, 291 ; criti- 
cism, 1 ; as an historical teacher, 
12, 291 ; patriotic and religious 
bias of, 7 ; mob judgment of Joan 
of Arc, 175, 178 ; mob judgment of 



320 



INDEX. 



Margaret of Anjou, 201 ; tones 
down character of Henry VIII., 
253, 254, 274, 305 ; historical set- 
ting of his times required delicacy, 
258, 305. 

Shaw, Dr. Ralph, sermon of, inciting 
the people to disinherit Edward 
v., 225. 

Shrewsbury, importance of the bat- 
tle of, 96, 104, 106, 114. 

Sigismund, tlic Emperor, vainly at- 
tempts to make peace between 
France and England, 159. 

Skottowe, Augustine, on Richard II., 
60; on the authorship of Henry 
VIII., 269. 

Socialism of the fifteenth century, 
192 ; absurd side exploited by 
Shakespeare, 193. 

Soliloquies, use of, in Richard III., 
208, 237. 

Somerset, Dnke of (in Henry VI.), 
opposed to king's party, 185, 188. 

SufToik, Duke of (in Henry VI.), fa- 
vorite of Margaret of Anjou, 184 ; 
head of the king's party, 185; 
hated by the people, 191 ; relations 
with Margaret of Anjou, 191 ; ban- 
ished and slain, 192. 

Tarbes, Bishop of, first raises ques- 
tion of the validity of Henry's 
marriage with Katharine, 256. 

Taxation, abuse of, in reign of Henry 
VIII., 251 ; Katharine's plea for 
abatement of, 251 ; Henry dis- 
avows Wolsey's policy concerning, 
252. 

Tewkesbury, battle of, 200. 

Towton, battle of, 198. 

Troublesome Raigne, foundation 
play of King John, 16, 24, 25, 29, 
32, 37, 44, 48 ; anti-papal spirit of, 
32, 49. 



Troyes, treaty of, 161. 
Tyler, Wat, 60, 75. 

Ulrici, the commentator, on the 
dateof Henry VIII., 302. 

Wakefield, battle of, 198. 

Wales, conquest of, in Edward I., 58. 

Wars of the Roses, 9 ; indirect origin 
of, 68, 183, 292 ; the temple garden 
storj', 18;') ; genealogy of the con- 
testing houses, 183 ; appendix, p. 
307 ; parties to the strife, 184, 197 ; 
final struggle, 237, 238, 293 ; J. H. 
Green's comment, 295. 

Warwick, Earl of, the king maker, 
9 ; embraces the Yorkist cause, 
184; great i)olitical power of, 187 ; 
visits Prance ou behalf of Edward 
IV., 199 ; anger at Edward's slight- 
ing treatment, 200 ; alliance with 
Margaret and Henry, 200 ; un- 
seats Edward and replaces Henry 
on the throne, 200 ; death at Bar- 
net, 200. 

Welsh, arm.y of, desert Richard II, 's 
cause, 74. 

White, Richard Grant, 46. 

William of Orange, 26 ; compared 
with Lewis of France, 44. 

Wolsey, Cardinal, popular suspicion 
of, 248 ; importance of dramatic 
portrait of, 248 ; oppression of the 
Commons, 252 ; candidate for the 
papacy, 2.55, 256, 259 ; suspected of 
contriving the divorce, 256 ; real 
policy concerning the divorce, 2.59, 
285 ; disturbed by king's aflfection 
for Anne Boleyn, 2(50 ; shuffling 
and disingenuous conduct, 260, 261, 
285 ; humble origin of, 277 ; rapid 
growth in favor, 277 ; ability and 
influence with Henry, 278 ; noble 
plea against detractions, 279 ; 



INDEX. 



321 



lighter phases of his character, 
279 ; relations with Katharine, 
281 ; causes of his downfall, 281 ; 
charges against him, 283 ; ambi- | 
tious for the papacy, 255, 256, 259, 
284 ; final humility, 284 ; resume | 
of his career, 286. 

Women, influence of, in history, 51, I 
52. 

Wyckliffe, influence on religious and 
social life of England, 60, 89. | 



York, Duke of (in Richard II.), 
made regent, 70 ; feeble character, 
72 ; denounces the treason of his 
son, 83. 

York, Duke of (in Henry VI. ), founds 
a faction at court, 185 ; connec- 
tions with the Cade rebellion, 196 ; 
cause of, triumphant, 201 ; recog- 
nized by Parliamentary title, 198. 

York, House of, claims to the throne 
of England, 183. 



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